Johannesburg - When Pearl Pillay first started her business in 2012, she wanted to get into waste management with a former partner.
“At the time I wasn’t mentally ready for it. It is something that was pushed on to me as opposed to me wanting it for myself. I ended up not being as dedicated as I should have been back then, not doing the research or going out to get the business.”
While that first attempt did not quite work out for Pillay, it set her on a path to discovering her own entrepreneurship skills.
“I’ve always been someone who does something or other on the side to get money. It wasn’t ever streamlined to a particular field; it was always whatever would pop in from friends needing help to freelancing.”
In 2018, she decided to streamline her freelance work and fell in love with the mining sector. This led her to do a lot of research in the trucking industry and she ended up finding a liking with yellow plant machines.
“That’s where my business started to come into shape. I now have two sectors I focus on, the other being eventing. Events have always followed me and I think that is my calling more than anything.”
Pillay caters for corporate events and conferencing as well as the mining sector where she is involved in trucking and yellow plant machine.
She wanted her company name, Pigtail Trading and Projects, to stand out.
“I wanted my initials to be in it and it is a weird name that people don’t easily forget. I always get asked why I named the company Pigtail and I just wanted it to be memorable.”
As an up-and-coming company, she took a major knock from the pandemic as she did not have solid contracts and was doing a lot of ad hoc work.
“Trust and a track record are huge in the mining sector. I faced the dilemma of being a new company and a woman in mining. With lockdown, I couldn’t. As a woman in mining, she has faced a lot of challenges including not being taken seriously by men.
“It is hard. You can go into a meeting looking professional – hair, make-up and weave – and automatically you are branded and people don’t take you seriously. Sometimes you are seen as a sex object and instead of men listening to what you are bringing to the business table, people are trying to take you out for lunches instead.”
She said in many scenarios being heard was extremely difficult for women.
“How do you get the business if people can’t take you seriously? That is an obstacle you have to get over. Eventually people see the value you bring.”
She said people interested in starting in the mining sector needed to know about the expenses that came with it.
“It requires a lot of product capital. The machinery and trucks are expensive. I have tried a lot of avenues and unless you have a five-year contract, you can’t really get anything.
“The bank doesn’t fund you and you can’t get government funding. I have found it difficult to tap into financial support.”
Pillay is a single mom and takes risks to find the money to support herself and her son.
“You have to go through these challenges in order to learn and to be able to suss out what is real and what is not.”
She said that even though she had faced so many challenges, she could still see how her company was growing.
“I would like to also help other black women who want to start up in the sector once I am established. I have found that women in this sector don’t support each other as much as they should.
“I would like to start a forum that will help people not go through the difficulties that I went through,” she said.
Pillay supports and stands for women equality as the world celebrates International Women’s Day today.
The Star