Our story
The company is young. The experience behind it is not.
Naleli Innovations was formally established in 2023, but the work behind it started much earlier.
The journey did not begin with a clear career plan.
Thabiso Naleli finished school in Katlehong with no clear professional path and nobody nearby to explain one. Technology came first: opening computers, replacing parts, and assembling a first working machine from what could be found or afforded.
I learn by working with something, understanding how it works and trying to make it useful.
One question kept coming back: someone has started something. What do they need to do next?
Founder and key-person experience, gathered before and alongside Naleli Innovations. The lessons the company is built on, not Naleli Innovations projects.
- 01
People, leadership and community
Peer education and youth leadership: communication, facilitation and programme delivery, abilities that later mattered as much as technology.
- 02
Early entrepreneurship
Helping people register businesses and navigate processes they did not understand, long before registration went digital.
- 03
Public health and information
Health information systems, data quality and clinic readiness. Information is only useful when people can understand and act on it.
- 04
Coaching and human development
Where am I, where do I want to go, what is the practical next step? That logic now lives inside UPISM.
- 05
Business plans and working businesses
Sitting with entrepreneurs to work through customers, costs and projections. The lesson: a business plan and a working business are not the same thing.
- 06
Community technology at scale
Digital skills, coding and robotics, facilitator development, programme management, partnerships and reporting. Young people trained in early programmes went on to facilitate and build careers of their own.
- 07
Technology had to become operational
When classrooms closed, programmes moved to WhatsApp, Zoom and Teams. The solution could not begin with “here is the platform”. It had to begin with helping a person use it.
- 08
Operational business systems
Supporting business systems in operational environments. The lesson: a system problem is often really a process problem.
- 09
Governance, risk and compliance
Information security, privacy, risk and compliance. Not a separate career, another layer on the same thread.
People are often given information, systems or plans without enough help to actually use them.
Naleli Innovations brings those lessons into one practical model. Support should not stop at telling people what to do.
2023: Naleli Innovations (Pty) Ltd
The company was new. The work behind it was not. It became the formal home for everything above.
From “Can I learn computers?” to Katlehong Computer School
A learning initiative began with a focus on technology and digital skills. The community asked a simpler question: “Can I learn computers?” So the name became simpler and the ambition bigger: from using a computer to using technology to do real work. That philosophy now sits within NIBS.
One thread runs through all of it.
Working with a person or organisation facing something they do not fully understand, then helping them move. Today that thread is called UPISM.
UnderstandPlanImplementSupportMeasure
Where we are now
Let's understand this properly. Then let's work out what needs to happen next.
Not a company that claims to know everything. A company that can sit with someone facing a difficult problem and help them move.