DURBAN - Dinesh Naidoo is a successful entrepreneur from Durban who runs his own travel agency called Serendipity Travel.
Naidoo began his journey as a student who studied software engineering at the Durban University of Technology, then known as the ML Sultan Technikon.
However Naidoo could not complete his tertiary education "I could not complete university because of financial reasons but later got involved in youth organisations in Durban."
He later started working for a company in the field of sales. The company dealt with travel and insurance. Naidoo was given the opportunity to oversee some of the travel initiativesafter a manager had left.
He said "Through this opportunity, I was able to travel to India".
Initially, his trip to the India was going to be for a short period but he fell in love with the country and in the end spent three month there.
When Naidoo went back to his company he spoke to his manager about doing travel packages to India but his manager was not interested.
Naidoo recognised the need to organise travel packages to India as there were limited options to travel there.
That is when he decided to create Serendipity Travel and he has never looked back.
When he started Serendipity he had no funding, his business was self-funded. He said that is was built slowly and with no overdraft.
Serendipity has grown from being a company that sold tickets to India to a company that is a force to be reckoned with in the travel industry.
Now Serendipity organises travel packages, sells tickets to SME's (small and medium-enterprises enterprises) and also organises visas.
Naidoo wants to expand his business to Africa. He is looking to take Serendipity to African countries like Malawi, Botswana, and the DRC.
When asked about the highlight of his career, Naidoo said "Sponsoring the IPL team, The Deccan Chargers, was definitely a highlight for me". Through this experience Naidoo got to work with Herschelle Gibbs, Rohit Sharma and other big cricket players.
Naidoo also believes in giving back to his community. He said "I am involved in community projects like the ABH fair, Mount Edgecombe Easter fair and I also sponsor the KZN Blind Cricket team".