André de Wet
Cape Town-based André de Wet helps companies grow and launch products and solutions in the mobile, commerce and e-commerce fields. He has been the keynote speaker at, among others, AfricaCom (twice); CGCSA (Consumer Goods Council of SA); eCommerce Africa Confex (three years in a row); Retail World Africa, headlined at Google’s Start-up Grind.
He is, however, equally excited when speaking about human potential and the challenges entrepreneurial business leaders face. He likes to get philosophical about the wide scope of opportunities available to us, be it on a personal level, or with challenges faced each day in business. He has a passion for everything digital and how it can, does and will change our lives – and how to use this to aggressively grow businesses. .
Some career highlights include recently heading up iflix Africa, part of iflix (the world’s leading sVOD service for emerging markets), where he grew the company to 80+ staff across 5 African countries in just over a year. This streaming media service is now live across a multitude of African territories with an international audience of more than 5 million subscribers.
Before that, he built the website and mobile app, PriceCheck to be the 5th most visited e-commerce website in Africa. In 2013, the PriceCheck app was voted ‘the best mobile app internationally’, beating 150 000 other entrants from across the world. In S.A. this app went on to be voted the MTN ‘Business App of the Year’ and had more than a million app downloads in its first year. In December 2015, while under André’s leadership, PriceCheck was selected as one of South Africa’s top25 companies to work for by Fast Company magazine.
An enjoyment for extreme sports and bucket list items, saw him setting up a Guinness World Record in KiteBoarding in Cape Town in 2016 and crossing part of the Himalayas by motorbike in 2017.
His most requested talks are:
- “Why It takes 15 years to become an overnight success” – why the first million takes so long to make and why the second doesn’t.
- “Reclaiming the market: What SA lost and the rest of the world won” – the scope of opportunity we have in SA and how to use the rest of the world as our market place.
- “Blended Business: E-Commerce opportunities in an offline world” – how mobile commerce changes everything for a traditional retailer or media owner.
- “Building high performance teams without becoming a d***” – leading humans in a digital world.
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