Malander Group turns 5 and celebrates its way into the future with international growth and further acquisitions
On 15 October 2015, the vision of two young professionals was finally recognised when they turned their dreams of starting up their own business into a reality. Co-founders and Chartered Accountants, Lyle Malander and Shaveera John, left the corporate world and started a Chartered Accounting and Financial Advisory business called Malander Advisory, which is currently the cornerstone of the expanded Malander Group. Today, the Group provides solutions in the areas of finance and accounting, human capital and digital marketing to large and listed entities, as well as SMMEs.
Having started out with just two people – the co-founders of the Group, the vision was always to build a high growth environment aimed at not only providing a platform for employees to succeed, but to provide professional services to contribute to the success of their clients. With service excellence at the core of the newly formed entity’s DNA, Malander and John managed to secure their first client, being a large multinational entity listed on the JSE, which was a testament to their ability to deliver on large scale projects.
Three months later, in January 2016, the company reached its next milestone when the first employee was hired. This was done to expand its service capability and enhance its professional service offering within the Malander Advisory business, which has subsequently delivered on a multitude of large-scale finance function projects for many large and listed entities within South Africa and abroad.
With the growth experienced early on, the team was driven to build a reputable professional services brand, which naturally required the recruitment of talented professionals with a common vision. To facilitate this, Malander Placements was launched as a division of the Malander Group in August 2016 to not only assist in attracting the right talent internally, but also to provide clients with a more diversified service offering. Understanding that 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a very different world, especially when it came to ways of working and in order to increase the human capital objective of facilitating employment, the Group launched an online freelancer marketplace called Freelance Magnet in June 2020.
After having grown its Accounting and Finance as well as human capital capabilities, the company soon realised that Digital Marketing was an effective way for businesses to attract clients and build a brand and as a result, officially launched Malander Digital in February 2017. The Digital Marketing environment proved to be a complex environment and in order to increase market share and capability, the Group purchased a controlling stake in Evergreen Media in October 2020, a B2B digital marketing agency. Evergreen Media was the perfect fit as it has an already established leadership team, with a business model focusing on targeted audiences for specific markets and very much aligns with the Malander Group strategy. Aiming to expose businesses to a wider audience than was ever available through traditional media while targeting a more relevant buyer who is actively searching your products and services, the service best positions companies to achieve the highest return on investment.
Bring on May 2018 and Malander UK was successfully opened in London. This division is headed up by Bailey Corder and was the first step to global expansion for The Malander Group, which provided opportunities to not only increase its client base, but also gain more diversified experience performing professional services on a global scale.
The Group generally focused on providing services to large and listed entities up until November 2018, when they launched M-inent (pronounced “em·i·nent”), a cloud-accounting business providing accounting and business growth solutions to small and medium sized entities with the intention to help companies grow.
“Throughout this journey there have been some notable achievements, the main being able to create employment and opportunities within the South African economy,” says Lyle Malander.
Malander Group Director Lyle Malander, was the winner of the SAICA Top 35-under-35 competition in 2018 and was named the Young Professional of the Year in the commerce category in the South African Professional Services Awards in 2019, with the Malander Advisory team being nominated in the finance consulting firm of the year category at the same awards.
Earlier this year, the Malander advisory team was named best accounting and financial advisory firm in Johannesburg in the 2020 Worldwide Finance Awards hosted by Acquisition International.
Having reached the 5 year milestone on this day, the team at the Malander Group is certainly appreciative of the support to date and is looking forward to going from strength to strength.
