POINT OF ORDER
TIM COHEN: Lesson from the lentil king in building a business for today
EY's entrepreneur of the year, Murad al-Katib, has built a spectacularly successful global business on a crop that solves a plethora of problems
It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it. I have just spent the past five days in Monaco to attend, for the second time, accounting firm EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year competition. Alas, the winner of the South African competition, Super Group CEO Peter Mountford, didn’t win the global competition, but given the quality of the 50-odd entrants, his chances were small despite Supergroup’s amazing turnaround. It was won by Canadian Murad al-Katib, who runs a global food company that specialises in lentils. Who would have thought there was an enormous future in lentils, but when Katib explains it, it’s kinda obvious. Lentils are a high-protein, low-cost crop with a low environmental impact in a world in which the population is increasing by 75-million people a year – more or less the population of Canada. Katib, an enormous man with a disconcertingly bubbly personality, is CEO of AGT Foods and Ingredients, which has a big business in SA, based as one would expect in Krugersdorp. AGT i...
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