Yanesh Naidoo
Owner & Executive Innovations Director
Jendamark Automation Ltd.
As a 12-year-old boy, Yanesh Naidoo sold eggs and curry leaves to earn pocket money. Later, he moonlighted as a DJ to finance his engineering studies at the University of Cape Town. Today, as Jendamark’s executive innovations director, he has a much more interesting product to offer: the ever-evolving technology landscape of Industry 4.0.
Yanesh started his career as a project engineer for Volkswagen South Africa, where he was responsible for managing all aspects involved in sourcing equipment for VW’s production facilities. It was this interest in automation that saw him join Jendamark as a business development engineer in 2004, serving various sectors including the automotive, pharmaceutical and packaging industries.
After the global economic crash of 2008, when many other industries turned inwards and diversified their interests locally, Jendamark took the bold step of seeking out new international markets and focusing solely on the automotive sector. By then a company director driving this new vision, Yanesh was key in establishing new markets in Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. Under his guidance, Jendamark’s technology exports have grown to over 95 percent of the company’s annual turnover.
Today, he continues to identify opportunities for accelerated growth and aims to stay ahead of industry requirements by developing software and technologies to create industry-leading assembly facilities.