Bhanti Qwesha takes fifteen vitamins a day. It’s not vanity, it’s survival. When you’re running a mobile beauty empire that spans four South African cities, when your office is wherever you can book space, when your next client might be in Cape Town today and Johannesburg tomorrow, your body becomes both your vehicle and your business asset.

“I had to lose weight in order for me to run my business efficiently,” says Qwesha, founder of Blended by Bhanti, speaking matter-of-factly about the physical demands of her unconventional business model. “I take antioxidants to protect me against the environmental changes, anti-inflammatories, magnesium to sleep and magnesium to keep me awake during the day. I am a vitamin-driven machine.”

It’s this kind of radical reimagining of what beauty services can look like, of how businesses can operate, of who gets to succeed in the industry that has made Qwesha a force to be reckoned with in South African beauty.

At 28, she’s not just running a business, she’s dismantling the traditional salon model and rebuilding it on her own terms.

The Unlikely Entrepreneur

Qwesha’s journey began in 2017, not with a grand business plan, but with a simple rebellion against convention. Fresh out of university with degrees in economics and logistics, she faced a choice: create a CV and join the corporate world, or bet on herself.

“I was already a self-taught makeup artist by then,” she recalls, adding: “And I was like, what more can I do in order for me to take this on as a career?”

Her parents weren’t convinced. In fact, they’d been sceptical since she was 16, when she first expressed her desire to skip traditional academics for business. Even after she launched Blended by Bhanti, they viewed it as a hobby until 2023, six years after she’d started building what would become a multi-city operation. “They only started taking it seriously in 2023,” Qwesha says with a laugh that carries both vindication and understanding. ‘And I started in 2017.’

Innovation Born from Necessity

What sets Blended by Bhanti apart isn’t just its mobile model, though that’s revolutionary enough in an industry built around fixed locations. It’s Qwesha’s keen understanding of gaps in the South African beauty landscape, particularly around inclusivity and accessibility for melanin-rich skin.

“I am launching a skincare brand called Blended Skin, and we have two variations,” she explains, her excitement palpable. “The melaninous range will deal with hyperpigmentation and melasma that my clients are really struggling with. And we have the EMBO range, an ancestral-inspired skincare range that treats mitochondria.” The EMBO line represents something deeper than product development. “I have noticed with working with people that the overstimulation of skin needs something that counters it,” she says. “We need to treat skin in a way that works for melanin-rich skin.”

The Academy: Teaching Them to Outgrow Her

Perhaps most telling about Qwesha’s approach is her Blended Academy, a mobile training programme that moves between Johannesburg, Cape Town, East London, and Mthatha. Like her main business, the academy challenges industry norms, but it also reveals something profound about her philosophy of success.

“The idea behind the Academy is that I need my students to kick me out of the industry,” she says, a statement that initially sounds counterintuitive for a business owner. “By giving them exactly the skills that I have and them being good enough for the market to make me close shop.” This isn’t self-sabotage, it’s strategic thinking.

“By bringing new energy, new skills, it would force me to upskill myself and go into a different venture.” The academy emerged from her own difficult training experience, where she felt looked down upon for coming from the Eastern Cape to train in Pretoria. Now, she brings training directly to aspiring beauty professionals, ensuring they learn from ‘a face and a voice that sounds like them.’

But Qwesha is realistic about the challenges her students face. The biggest knowledge gap she sees? “They actually think that the beauty industry is easy to navigate and it is not.” She doesn’t coddle them with false encouragement. Instead, her training manuals include everything from technical skills to social media strategy, because as she puts it, ‘this is the kind of business that survives on 95 per cent new clients.’

The Hard Truths

Qwesha’s success comes with brutal honesty about the industry, about business, and about herself. When asked about her biggest mistakes, she doesn’t hesitate: “Not doing things quicker has been my biggest mistake. And not failing forward.” She wishes she’d opened her makeup artistry academy sooner, moved faster into product development, embraced failure as a learning tool rather than waiting for perfection.

But perhaps her most valuable insight cuts to the heart of entrepreneurship mythology: “Passion does not build businesses. Passion must find you working. Sustainable businesses are not built on passion. They’re built on discipline, resilience, and hard work.”

The Vision Forward

Today, Qwesha operates across four major South African cities, managing logistics that would challenge a traditional business. She books offices through co-working platforms, navigates weather-related cancellations, deals with clients uncomfortable with technology and unfamiliar locations. She’s built systems around uncertainty, created stability in movement. The physical demands remain real. Beyond the vitamins, she prepares for seven-week tours like an athlete, ensuring she can maintain the energy and focus required to serve clients while constantly travelling. It’s a lifestyle few would choose, but one that allows her to serve women who might never have access to high-end beauty treatments otherwise.

Her clients, she says, love her for her ‘skill, transparency, and soul’, qualities that seem to flow naturally from someone who has consistently chosen the harder path in service of a bigger vision.

As Blended by Bhanti evolves into Blended Skin and beyond, Qwesha remains focused on that original mission: creating space for Black women to ‘glow, grow, and own their space in the world.’ It’s beauty as empowerment, business as social change, success measured not just in profit but in the number of lives touched and transformed.

“Everything is going to work out,” she would tell her 2017 self. “You just have to take things one step at a time, work on it, perfect it, put it out there.”

Seven years later, she’s proof that sometimes the most revolutionary thing you can do is refuse to stay in one place.