In today’s special episode, we get to know Drisha Kirkman, Head of Global Program Management and Sustainability at Paymentology. Drisha is one of the people that gave an opportunity to Miranda in the payments space and that’s why we’re so excited to be talking to her today. First, we get to know about Drisha: where she hails from and what her early career looked like. Next, we look at her journey at what started as Tutuka, and is now Paymentology. We learn about the opportunities, the highs and lows that took a small company and transformed it into a global powerhouse. Finally, we discuss the factors that motivate Drisha as an individual to break new ground in the Fintech space.
0:00 Introducing Drisha Kirkman
1:43 Drisha’s Background and Early Career
8:40 Starting Out at Tutuka (now Paymentology)
20:24 Working with VISA inc. and FIFA to enable the 2010 World Cup VISA card
24:53 Breaking into New Markets with VISA and Mastercard
35:45 Key Choices and Decisions in the organizations journey
44:51 Experiences through travel and pitching to different cultures as a female
49:55 What Drives Drisha
59:22 The Fintech Industry in Africa and Beyond
1:18:06 Conclusion
Hey everyone, welcome back to the underdogs in Africa podcast. This is episode five. Today, this is more of a personal journey, the personal story. And I’ve got a guest here who’s actually very close to my heart. I often talk about my journey in payments when I started my career.
And I often refer to a handful of people that gave me opportunities, opened up doors and really supported me through that progression story. Also, if you think back 10 years ago, even longer, about fintech in Africa, women in this industry, diversity and inclusion, there were no females
In boardrooms except one. And her name is Drisha. We’re in an undisclosed location today, shooting this podcast. But yes, welcome to our guest, Drisha Kirkman. She’s currently the head of Global Program Management and Sustainability at Paymentology, who were to Tutuka back in the day.
We’re very excited to dig deep into that during this conversation. But just thank you, Drisha, for making the time. Thank you for inviting us into your home. And we’re really looking forward to chatting with you today. Oh, thanks for having me. Very excited to be here.
Yeah, it’s been amazing watching you grow. So looking forward to the conversation. Thank you. Let’s start with where you come from. So I grew up in an Indian township in Durban called Isipingo Hills. I went to primary school over there. I went to high school in Amanzimtoti,
Kingsway High, had a bursary into UKZN. So studied at UKZN, become marketing and management. And at university, I then got a scholarship to or more of a cultural exchange program to Germany. So I spent some time in Tuebingen University in Germany and fell in love
With the idea of Europe and travel, as does most people out there. The home of Porsche and Mercedes. All those things, all those cool stuff. There’s what does back then. And I was like, well,
You know, this is it for me, I’m going to come move to Germany. But then when I dug into the actual living situation, I mean, you could you could continue studying. But it was very difficult from a language perspective to continue staying there. And you’d have to get a job and then to
Be able to pay for it without speaking the language was pretty tough. So I was like, well, what’s the next best thing I could travel and go to? And of course, it’s like most South Africans back then, it’s go to London, go to London town. So instead of doing my honors, I like
Beg my parents to buy me a plane ticket. And back then I had a beating up old Monza, which I sold, packed up two suitcases after graduation and went to London. No job or anything. I had a cousin there who said, sure, I could come and stay with him and
His girlfriend. So I was like, yay, okay, I have accommodation at least. Get to London. The accommodation turned out to be a hostel. Oh, my word. So there where I was a bright and bushy tail, 21 year old, never been out of the house,
Staying in a hostel in Chelsea. At least I was in Chelsea. At least you were in Chelsea. At least you were in London. In Europe overseas. I was overseas. You know, it was, you know, a thing my mom and dad get to tell people my
Daughter’s life. Little did they know it was me sharing a room with like eight other people. The details don’t matter. So yeah, that is kind of like my first, I get worried to like travel and I probably got to grow
Up then. So, you know, I started taking whatever jobs I could get at the time. So I worked at the gym. You worked at the gym. What did you do at the gym? At first I was the receptionist at a gym.
It was a woman’s gym, fitness class for women and crouch end. And I worked my way up to sales. I was selling gym contracts. Then what else did I do? I did do a, it took on a job and the job description was marketing managers. That sounded cool. Went for the interview and
Stuff. Little did I realize that marketing management door-to-door sales. I was doing door-to-door sales for a while knocking on small businesses trying to get them to sign up for a telecom phone service, but it wasn’t BT. So it was very difficult. That didn’t last very long.
And then eventually I got into quite a cool business. Still exists, I guess. It’s called the Money Shop. And it did a lot of, like, people would come in to trade, well, to cash in their checks
And because London used a lot of checks, which is also a bit weird for me, but like a lot of people still use checks. And what was the interesting part is they were in partnership with Western Union.
So the whole company had a lot of like foreigners. I met people from all over the world, you know, just working within that company. And then it was my first look into what money transfer looked like. And that was kind of exciting. How old were you then?
21, 22. Okay. So yeah, so I spent the year in London doing this and like, you know, finally found a home with some friends in the money shop and ended up doing some really nice travel going to Paris and Spain and Netherlands and Belgium and a whole bunch of European countries.
Yeah. So it was, yeah, it was a very nice. Sounds very exciting. It wasn’t exciting, yeah. I was, I was poor. But it was a fun time, you know, when a young 32 year old out of the house, like exploring a bit of the world, seeing different cultures, meeting some interesting people. And
Yeah. And so you want me to continue the story? It sounds very interesting. Like, what I’m thinking about as you’re speaking is that you toured a lot of Europe before you actually traveled across Africa, right? And I’m also thinking at the same time for a young Indian girl
That comes out of Derb’s to be able to do that is quite powerful. It’s quite a powerful story and quite admirable too for many others that will watch your, you know, your journey and have seen your progression over the years. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, it was, it was like quite a thing,
You know, being out of the house, understanding what like small things like how to budget, like how to, you know, pay rent and then realize that you had only X amount for groceries and how to live alone and how to do your washing, how to make your food.
I really should have paid attention when you were cooking because now I’m a little strapped at the moment. So yeah, it was, it was honestly a year of like real growth for me, I guess, learning independence and getting to see a lot of countries that you probably only
See on TV. So it’s pretty exciting meeting lots of different people, you know, just hanging out and enjoying a little bit of the world, I guess. Yeah. And what did you study? So I started to be calm. So I majored in management, business and marketing. Okay.
So very cool. So yeah, so I finished that, but I never got the honors on that because traveling instead. Okay, so after that stunt, I mean, how long did you do that for? You said a year? And what brought you back to South Africa?
So I’ve got back to South Africa for something really silly, a boy. I love this. Let’s unpack that. So my husband has the same story. So he also comes from Durban. Yes. He was dating this girl. She moved to Joberg. He followed her and then she moved back to Durban.
Luckily, he stayed. Otherwise, you would never have met. There we go. There we go. And I knew that story and I have something really similar to my case. So yeah, I mean, you know, before I’d
Left, I’d had a boyfriend and it was like, no, you know, we’re young. So we’re going to explore and all of that. So he’ll wait for you? He’ll wait for me, of course. But like, you know,
Going towards the end of the year, it was like, no, you know, I thought, ah, this is the man of my dreams. Yeah. Am I going to be here forever? Probably not. So, you know, I should, I should
Probably go home. And so I came back to South Africa and I went to Cape Town because he was there at UCT at the time. And yeah, he proceeded to dump me about a month into it. So after all of that,
I was like, what a waste. So yes, I got dumped like pretty soon after moving back. And then I was like kind of in Cape Town. And then I was like weighing up my options about, you know, where to
Live. And I didn’t really feel like going back to Durban as well. And so I was like, well, Joburg seems like a really nice place to be in. Yeah, a nice city. And also I’d had that, you know,
That real sense of independence. I also wanted to continue like, you know, kind of being by myself and, you know, just just building something for myself. Yeah. So and that’s kind of when I met Rowan. How did you meet him online? Well, on the telephone first. Yeah, like, you know,
He was so Rowan had advertised for somebody marketing. And I was like, well, yeah, you know, I’ve done some sales jobs and like, but I’d seen some of the marketing play and I’d studied it. So yeah, okay, cool. I could do marketing. That’s quite easy. He was looking for somebody to
Rewrite the website of this little startup in Joburg. Yeah. At the same time, I was actually applying to KPMG. And so I was, I was going through the KPMG motion. And but KPMG takes like months. Yeah, because you have to do the whole biometrics and have to do a test, a cycle and
All of that. And it was an insurance department. Oh, I would. So I was like, you know, and I’d spoke and then Rowan called me up. And I completely lied about some of the experience that I had
Because I wrote the HTML. I’m like, you know, and he was like, what’s going on about my coding experience? Because I was like, not quite. But I guess he kind of like liked my confidence of
Talking nonsense because I was telling myself that the truth is I just wanted to get out of the city and get to another city. Yeah. So he was like, yeah, come, you know, come have an interview
And stuff. So I was like, great. So I’d come up, you know, met him at this dodgy little office. And I was like, I don’t think this is a garage. Yeah, you know, a tiny little office. And, you
Know, I met, I met him and I was like, okay, it’s a really small little business. I’d seen it. I was actually seeing a couple of other interviews during that week that I was up here. But one in like, Pretoria side, and I was like, I’m not going to Pretoria.
And then the KPMG stuff, I was still going through it. So I was like, you know what, I’m just going to take this small, this job in the small company for now. Yeah, when KPMG comes, then yeah. Exactly. So when the KPMG job comes, I’m going to get, you know,
So I’ll stick this out for like a month or two, just so I can go. And plus it was in the right location. So I was like, you know what, I’m going to take this job. And he also like, you know,
To his credit, he like believed the lies about my coding experience or like pretended that he did. But we all know. We all know. That he knew right then and then that I was talking absolutely
Nonsense and lied on my CV. Yeah. And he’s probably like, yeah, I should be a great self person 10 years in advance, lead the whole team, you know, running. So then I, yeah, so I moved in,
Like I moved to Joberg like super quick, like two weeks later, yeah, to start in April, in April six, 2006. Sure. So I joined this little office of seven people in in Ravonia. And he was like,
Okay, you know, what do we do? And I was like, so confused. I was like, I have no idea what this little company called Tutuka does. Yeah. And then he was like, well, you know, do you ever buy vouchers?
22 years old. Really? Then he’s like, okay, you know, well, we do these paper vouchers and all these retailers that that use us. And back then it was like, some nice names like a musical look and listen. And I still love music stores. I spend my whole youth sitting in music shops.
So for me, that was quite cool. I saw the musical and for looking listen brands. And then there was paper vouchers that they were printing and shopping centers and all of that. I was like, okay, that’s kind of interesting. Yeah. And then he saw my first job was to like
Rewrite the websites of Tutuka to kind of explain. So here I was, you know, 22 years or never written a website in my life, but I’m like, you must practice your HTML. And then write up this website.
So I was doing a little writing. And that first year, what had happened fairly soon after I joined is that Tutuka formed a relationship with Stan Bank, South Africa, and Mastercard to issue the first gift card in a shopping center. And the whole thing is that these shopping centers said,
You wanted a card, you know, because plastic’s better than paper, and we wanted to work in every single store. So how do you do that through an open loop payment mechanism? And so the gift card for shopping centers have launched at that point in time. And that was 2007. 2006. 2006. Yeah,
The very same year. It was already like start the motions offered have started. So in 2006, we launched the first shopping centers. And the thing is, because there were only like seven people in the company, it turned into a, okay, who’s available to go out and like
Install a shopping center. So we kind of ended up doing like shopping center installations, support calls, answering questions, you calling merchant services, setting up, carrying the printers, putting the physical terminals in some of them, training, so we had
To train them on how this is a gift card, this is how you load it. Yeah. Back then we offered a service as well, that was, you go to every single store and you show them the gift card and they
Signed that they’ve seen that they know how to swipe it. Which sounds lame, but for me, I actually even learned that after doing my best life, going to shopping centers around the country, like going to each and every store. Because you were traveling, you were doing your vibes away
From home. Exactly. You know, 22. 22, 23. 22, just been dumped, job of your dreams. Traveling the whole of South Africa. Yeah, sounds like every Indian girl’s story that ends up in some sort of career trajectory. Exactly. So when KPMG did call, I was like, no,
No. I was like, I don’t think this is for me. Yeah. Because it was insurance and I was like, well, you know, I’m seeing shopping centers now, so I loved it. So yeah, that was kind of how
It, the story of Tutuka and my journey at that kind of began. And it was, yeah, and this shopping center cards took off. And then from shopping centers, it grew into more of an incentive-based rewards card programs, because a lot of the corporates wanted a way to reward staff. And
You know, they could buy vouchers or they could issue their own card with their own brand on it. Yeah. And so the actual corporate incentive rewards market ended up changing towards these type of card programs because, you know, before that, it would all be merchandise. So,
You know, you’d have to get on a travel portal or get a coffee machine or whatever for your rewards. But here you actually could get real value. Yeah. And that’s where the real uptick in these cards took off. So we saw it grow everywhere. Big brands came on board, you know, Unilever and
Anglo and all of those large companies all started using these cards. And our phones, the office just, you know, couldn’t stop ringing because people wanted to get cards. And so I ended up like almost, you know, selling the card system,
Account managing a lot of it, still doing the support course when it came through. And we spent, yeah, like the next two years doing these type of rewards, shopping center, anyone that wanted a piece of plastic that could replace any sort of cash. And then in 2008,
Because a lot of them said, well, you know, I want to get cash out of this card because this prepaid card is really cool. But now, you know, there’s a limitation of only pause usage. Yeah. How do I get cash? Your actual money. Yeah, actual money, like it could solve so many things
For us. And so in 2008, you know, working with Stannabank, we launched like the first cash card on the platform. And that solved a lot of issues when it came to payroll solutions. Microfinancing solutions. Yeah. And we won some pretty big deals in terms of the ability of putting
A prepaid card in markets to replace cash, but also someone to have the security of a card. Instead of being able to be paid in cash. It’s trusted. It’s a trusted brand, you know, and it’s a mastercard. You know, we’re backed by a big bank. They could put their brands on it.
And it gave people who didn’t have bank accounts the ability to actually just get a card that they could use at an ATM, and they could use as a point of sale. They function just like one, actually.
Yeah. And then it just, so that kind of took off. And you know, even today, that’s like probably one of the biggest products we have is this pay card program that did really well. And still today is very much relevant, especially in the markets that we operate in and the
Continent of Africa. Yeah. So that was the first pay card. In 2010, South Africa had the World Cup, Soccer World Cup. It was a big, big deal. Everyone was, you know, super excited. And for us, it was especially, at Tutuka, it was especially exciting because
We won the deal to do a visa card at all the stadiums. And there was a first visa card. Yeah, exactly. We’d never processed or issued a visa card before. But on top of that, Visa had
Signed a deal with FIFA to actually say that, you know, in those stadiums, you cannot use any other brand except Visa. Yeah. So there was no MasterCard or a Chinese pay or Diners or MX at the time.
So we want to deal to do the solution that you could exchange your, through a machine, you could pay with your MasterCard or your MX Diners, all of that, and get a pre-paid visa card that you could use within the stadium and five kilometers around the stadium. So yeah, it’s
Very legal. But I mean, it was the first of its kind. And actually, since we did it in 2010, like every visa sponsored event, they actually do that approach. 100% the Olympics, all of that. They now do it where they go cashless. And then whichever brand wins it wins the entire acquiring
Piece of that event. So I project managed that, which was really crazy. Those big yellow kiosks. Yes, the big yellow kiosks. Exactly. So we worked with manufacturers for the kiosks. We had to do our first visa installation. We had this whole FIFA team that had like landed here
For like the year preceding. So from 2009, they were all like sitting here camping. Yeah, I mean, it was very exciting. It was a lot of work. And it was still a small team. It was a very small team in 2010. I mean, we’d grown. We were like,
What will we chose to 30 people by this point? But I mean, if you think of the scale of what we’re doing, it was still a really small team. Incredible. Yeah. So, you know, Visa was a really strong partner helping out the, you know, with the entire solution.
And, you know, what was the bank behind that, by the way? Standard Bank. Standard Bank had done it as well. And it was one of their first visa cards as well. So it was quite a big deal at the time.
And yeah, I mean, we ended up doing that event and it went for the most part pretty smooth. Everyone was very excited. The card was really cool. And it became a souvenir. So people were like, all over, you know, trying to get ahold of these cards.
Yeah. So they would just buy them from their experience. Exactly, from the experience of, you know, the 2010 World Cup. And again, really good experience. We got to go to the different stadiums, do installations, do testing. So yeah, very like one of the highlights I think I’ve had is working on that
Project. And then of course, having the event here, and you know, in your home country, very, very emotional. And you felt a little part of it, you know, like you did. Purpose, performance, drive, ambition, and also like undershit. I mean, those cards, yeah, those.
Yeah, I don’t know. It was very cool to do that. The cards I did that. Does your mother have a card framed in her cupboard at home or like on the water? No, she can’t. I mean, you know, it was like, to tell your family, it was like,
Well, I went to that game because I did this. That I think was the big thing for them. When we went to the World Cup and I had to go buy us Coke and something to eat. And they forced me to buy the card. I’m like, A, you just start it.
Yeah. In South Africa. In South Africa. Yeah. Even Johannesburg, you know, a little, little, little office in Rivonia. Little Tutukaman office. Yes. While we were called Tutuka, Tukaka, to… Tutuke. Walk into a room and someone say, hi Tutuka. Nice to meet you. Actually, it’s Miranda. Yeah, I’m from Tutuka.
Exactly, I mean, Tutuka was getting a really big reputation by then because, you know, we were the first to do a lot of things from gift cards, corporate cards, payroll, and then this World Cup card now and having a visa relationship.
And that ended up serving us really well because, you know, after the World Cup, we got a call from the visa team to say, yeah, do you guys, yeah. Do you guys want to do a card for Orange Botswana? And we’d never done a card outside of South Africa at that point.
And Rowan and I were like, yes, that’s awesome. And then they were like, okay, can you? That’s like, okay, hold on a second. That’s like you selling your HTML. We had no idea how to do it. That is why you and Rowan, Rowan was like, I like her. Exactly, you know.
So yes, now, figured out later. Figured out later. That’s kind of how we did that was our approach on everything. Everything is yes. You know, I don’t know if you guys know, you know, Sean, our CTO back then, our CTO, he’s like, everything is possible. It’s just a matter of when.
So we were kind of like, yes, we could definitely do it. And they were like, okay, great. Come to Orange. So we were like, oh, okay, cool. And we thought we were going to go up to Botswana, you know, just next door, like the 30 minute flight, whatever.
And they were like, no, you’re coming back to Paris and we were like, okay, cool. So luckily, I think for some reason I had a visa available, a Schengen and Rowan was able to also go. But we were like, still, you know, our little company and we weren’t like, we didn’t have
That much money. So our travel was fine economy, economy minus, economy minus. It’s like the cheapest flights you can get into Paris, 16 hours, whatever, you know, that’s like looking at the cheapest Ethiopia kind of thing, you know, to get through. I’ll take one with all the stops. Yes. Yeah, exactly.
You know, we’re going there back of it. So, I mean, and I distinctly remember this, I mean, we had like, you know, 15 hour, whatever flights to get in, get by a like, I think it was KLM at the time.
So yeah, by Amsterdam, wait for the delay, get into Paris and we land in the morning off the meeting and we shower in the train station because you can’t pay for those showers. So we go to the train station, we showered everything and we go to orange and and we
Like, yeah, so we do our like, pitch about the cards that we do and we think it’s like, you know, a normal payroll card is what we’re doing with the funds on the card and we like getting this like really blank look out of everybody and we’re like, like, we had like
A little bit of a lunch break and then everyone’s like, it’s not going so well. Yeah, I don’t think so, hey. So we get back in the room and they look at us and they’re like, okay, we don’t want to do what you’re saying. Yeah, we don’t want this.
So we’re like, oh, okay, okay, so what do you want? And they were like, okay, we want to hold, yes, we want to hold the balance. We got our own systems. We just want the card to access something, the funds that we’re already hosting.
And we’re like, okay, you know, we’ve never done anything like that. I mean, the prepaid model back then, this is still 2010 now, 2010, you know, prepaid model cards are, you know, the card holds the balance, you move the funds to the card and everything sits on the card.
But in this model, it was, nope, everything sits in a separate store value and we just needed the card to access this. And on top of that, they wanted a virtual card. And I mean, you know, you can imagine it’s 2010, there aren’t exactly too many virtual cards in the world.
Mind you, that was outside of South Africa. Yes. So, so of course we said yes, I mean, you know, into Sean profile, hybrid shadow. And we spent, yeah, so, so we spent the afternoon just unpacking on a whiteboard, Rowan drawing it out on a whiteboard, exactly what they wanted as a solution.
And we said, sure, we’ll come back with something. And we spent one night in Paris. And even though I was completely exhausted for 15 hours, I have to go take a photo. I have to go, you know, in Paris, of course, take out as many photos as I could, quarter
Flight the next morning, came back to Johannesburg, my one night in Paris. And came back to Johannesburg, sat down with Sean, our CTO and said, Sean, yeah, you said anything possible. So this is what we need to build. So we’re like, okay, okay, we can do something.
So you know, mapped it out with him, wrote out the actual like API within like a week or two at that time, sent it back to orange and said, here’s the, you know, you guys keen and they were like, yeah, let’s do it. And that launched in 2011, right?
No, it took a while, much longer, closer to 2012, 2013, because they needed to get regulatory approval. And in that period, the whole Atlas Mara deal happened in KBC. Exactly. So they hadn’t secured, they’d been chatting to their sponsors at the time, but didn’t secure the deal.
But in the meantime, we were still just building in the background. Yeah, I’ll be ready in like six weeks. Exactly. So we wrote out the whole API and everything before it was ready, gave it to them.
And yes, the good news for us is that it took a bit longer for them to get their approvals and to launch. And when they finally did launch, I mean, it was like, you know, like one of the very first, now what we commonly call like, you know, companion cards in the market.
And it happened in Botswana, Africa, which I’m very proud of. And that’s very impressive. No, absolutely. I mean, it was like, you know, it was a digital card as well. So it was a virtual card. I mean, it had its limits at the time. Issued by USSD. Yes, by USSD.
So all these complexities. But, you know, for the people of Botswana, it was a card that would stand on line. Game changer or something very, very different, unique. How do you use your mobile money funds outside of a mobile money ecosystem? 100 percent. And it worked.
And at the same time, you know, Visa, it also called us and said, you know what, you’ve got this telco in Thailand. Can you come, if they want the orange solution. So they, Aaron and I, get on a plane, go to Thailand. Cheap as flight. Cheap as flight possible.
And then, you know, pitched the companion idea, we just done it like we’re working out the orange. That’s a really made product. Because it’s a really product, you know. And… Sweat the asset. Yes. And they were so, they were like super excited about it.
And we spoke to two of their biggest telcos at the same time. It was DTAC and TRUE. And they were both in competition with each other. And they were like, the thing with Asia is, you know, things move really quickly.
And they were like, they wanted to be the first to launch a virtual card. And they already had like hundreds of thousands of subscribers within their ecosystem using their wallets that they’d already created. So it was… Emerging market use cases. Yeah. 100%.
And I mean, there it was like, not as limited as some of the regulation we’d experienced in Botswana. So it meant that somebody could actually now in Asia without a credit card access the Apple and the Google Play stores and Steam games. So that was like a massive use case for them.
And unfortunately Visa ended up losing the deal to Mastercard and we had to do it with Mastercard. It was not really bad because Visa had taken us there. Yeah. But… That’s happened a few times. It’s happened a few times in my career.
So but we did end up launching and that true product is still live today. This was 2014. And it’s one of the largest Mastercard issued virtual card program across Southeast Asia still to date. So yeah, I mean, that was then our foray into the Asian markets.
And we kind of realized that, you know, there’s a large opportunity here on to something in Southeast Asia because, I mean, they’re quite similar to the African continent in some respects in terms of the lack of credit card penetration, the lack of infrastructure, the usage of mobile wallets probably over there.
People want to have an online experience or asset that they could use. So we thought, you know what, this is actually a pretty good market for us. So we did, you know, we formed really strong partnerships with the local Mastercard and
Visa teams and made sure we spoke to the right people that would get us through the…at least speaking to telcos because we also realized that telcos were a big area that we could enable quickly. And so it began with this companion card model, you know, the wallets and the realization
That telcos had such big customer bases. They seemed like a no-brainer in terms of who we would target. So I mean, Africa and Southeast Asia were big markets in this. So we started targeting MNOs in the region using our relationships with Mastercard and
Visa, speaking to them about digital cards, virtual cards were the easier one to get before we went into physical. But I mean, a lot of them we also, depending on the market, we pitched physical cards as well.
And Tutuka began to grow and, I mean, we just started adding on countries one by one all over the region. Very fast. Very, very quickly. Very, very quickly. Yeah. So, I mean, Tutuka’s one of those untolds, or at least I don’t think it’s told enough right, true African success stories.
It is South African founded, Africa bred, Africa expanded into the rest of the world. And now has become a mammoth global leading issuer processor, right? What do you think of some of the reasons that the team stuck to non-bank emerging market use cases?
Because we know it’s complex markets, very gray and clear and defined regulatory, you know, licensing requirements, difficult to collaborate with the banks and introduce, you know, like why is a non-bank issuing a banking type of product? The customer behavior is quite different to a bank’s customer, longer to earn revenues.
Why stick to that use case? What is the reason behind it? I think the fact that we’d come from a place where we knew, you know, unless there’s generally like a few strong bank players in the market, but they cannot reach a whole host of people.
And if you think about it, I mean, you know, even today, South Africa is considered a very bank market, but we’re still very cash heavy, you know, there’s large disparities, people don’t have access to these type of solutions.
And with much respect to the banks, they still have a long way in terms of earning trust of everybody. They’re also mammoths in terms of the technology that they use, it takes them a while to, you know, get traction, and they’ve never really been able to penetrate the entire spectrum of people.
That require access. That require access. You know, they’re usually in the middle income or the high income space. That low income just kind of gets forgotten. It also doesn’t make sense for some of them because of the costs involved in getting them into the environment.
And for the people in that specific region, they don’t, you know, there’s a trust element, there’s a costing element. So for them, you know, as for a lot of people, not just for a lot of people, they want to
Have the ability to do payments, but, you know, they don’t, they may not know how to, but also the ease of using something. So what do you trust when you trust your like phone, you have it with you all the time, how you, you know, that’s something that almost everybody has it.
I mean, in sub-Saharan Africa as well, the penetration of cell phones is still prolific. And it’s, and it’s the same market dynamics in all emerging markets is that, you know, phones are still the thing that people will have no matter what. Yeah.
It’s one of the first things that people get when they have a little bit of money. So it was like, how do we actually access this target, you know, this type of customer base, but give everybody access to these types of solutions?
I mean, the one thing about Tutuka, and the sustainability in the cultural part is that, you know, part of our ethos has always been to do good and to help our staff and our communities around us. And the thing with the emerging markets is that we honestly felt that it did help people.
Yeah. Change lives through payments. Change lives through payments. Yeah. 100%. We give people to access to things and services that they never had before. So that’s why we specifically targeted it, because also they weren’t too many people targeting that industry and that market at the time.
You know, they’d be the giant international players that would come into the space, and their costing was so off the grid, it would never make sense. The banks didn’t have the models to do it. So we thought, you know, why not create a simple to launch solution that could integrate
Into whatever store of value that already existed, that already had a customer base that people trusted, and do it at a low cost point. So it gave people… Bold value around it. Exactly. And do it at a quick, simple, low cost point that would make sense for everybody. Yeah.
So that was kind of the reason and the ethos behind why we went into that emerging market play. Yeah. And I mean, like, I just want to pause there for a second, right? Because, like, there’s so much, I feel like we, I could talk to you for hours about the
Whole Tutuka story, right? There was always something that stood out, and, you know, when I joined, the team, it was still fairly small, right? And that growth was, that was a high growth intake phase, you know, for us, but we were all taught to become generalists.
You know, you walk into a room and the team opposite you has 15 different people from seven different departments, and you’re like one man representing the whole business and every, you know, function behind you. It was also that you, you at the time were young, female, Indian, South African, walking
Around with this tall white oak, you know, into Africa, into Asia, you know, like, what was that journey like for you personally in terms of how you continue to grow in that space, the type of leadership that you were, you know, led under, how did you learn, and,
You know, so that you were able to pay that forward, because I really do feel like you, you do that, and you, you’ve done that with me. I mean, when I moved from my account, from my account management role into the business
Development role, I know at that point you were transitioning out, but I wouldn’t have made that jump if it weren’t for you supporting me through that period, right? So just thank you for that, if I hadn’t said thank you before. I really appreciate it, and I hold that very close to my heart.
But again, it’s, it’s this culture that we had created that, you know, just installed a sense of family giving back, you know, and, and how had, how did that translate in just in your personal life, the way you thought about things, the way you paid it forward?
And you know, how did that lead into you now leading their whole sustainability program globally? Yeah, I mean, I think, I guess that’s why I’ve been around, been with Tutuka, and you know, now paymentology for so many years is the, the culture and the opportunities that,
You know, people who are of color or young females don’t necessarily get. Yeah. And I mean, you know, it all starts with Rowan, the founder, taking a chance with someone lying to the TV of our age, you know, all the red hair and bedroom slippers, I can tell you that story.
Exactly, you know, taking a chance on me. And also, you know, allowing us to learn, and at that time, we were all learning how things worked and making up things on the fly. And I guess, you know, as a fintech, you had to do it.
So, but I think, you know, the culture was never a culture of too many layers, it was a very flat structure. Doors were always open and titles didn’t matter. So it never mattered, you know, what your title was, backgrounds didn’t matter.
And we were all, we were very conscious about when we hired people, you know, that it was always like diversity, and it was always about giving people a chance. So even if they had like, no zero payments experience, you would always give people a chance.
And like, you know, going around the client, seeing clients with Rowan, and again, when you walk into a room, you know, it can be intimidating, but the thing that we discovered and it goes back to that orange discussion is, it’s all about asking questions, what does the customer want, right?
It’s having that engagement of what do you want, drawing it out with them, you know, sometimes co-creating something, and if you understand your product or what you’re trying to, what you have and understand what they’re trying to do, you know, the pieces just fit together.
And then to the customer, it doesn’t matter that, you know, you’re a really short Indian girl from Dublin, South Africa. If you know your staff and you’re able to like, engage them in that way, they would, they would really trust you.
And it was always about becoming a trusted advisor, because when you’re still into people, you become a trusted advisor. And having a peer-to-peer relationship, thank you, Angie Watson. There you go. Age doesn’t matter. What you’re wearing doesn’t matter, you know, but what you’re talking and how you
Co-create with them, that was the thing that mattered. Although, I have heard stories where, I think it was in Asia somewhere, Southeast Asia, in one of your meetings, you rocked it to the meeting, bunch of guys around you, men
Around you, and they were like smoking Pakistan, they were like smoking, I’m like, you know, like, how was that experience? I mean, you know, I get it, right? And I also know that you walk in there and you will feel intimidated, but you will hold your own.
And it’s also because Rowan believed in you, and he trusted in you, and he empowered you, right, to kind of lead something and, you know, take charge of something. But in those situations, like, how did you navigate that? Listen, I’ve had like some pretty tricky situations, you know, to Bangladesh, arriving through
After a terrorist bombing, you know. I was going to ask you, it would be like, drop a question to Trisha, what’s your most memorable hectic experience in travel? And I think I would say the Bangladesh thing, that would be hectic. Yeah, we went to Bangladesh, that was fun.
Yeah, and I mean, Pakistan was a very, very interesting market as well, so you, I mean, you can imagine being an Indian female, hanging out in Pakistan, trying to, you know, launch business. Especially when you twang like that. To them, everyone’s not speaking, and it was very interesting because they would like,
You know, ask if I was from India or speak Hindi, and I’d say, no, I’m not, you know, and explain, again, the history of Indians, South Africans, let me give you a small history. 1652, but so, yeah, Pakistan was really interesting. And you’re right.
I mean, you know, sometimes you walk into a meeting and you are intimidated. I mean, there’s a huge boardroom, and I know which one we’re thinking about because they would have microphones like the UN. Ask a question and say, thank you.
So yes, I had to sit and go, hi, my name is Trisha. I’m from Tutuka, and everyone would ask the same question. What does Tutuka mean? What does Tutuka mean? What does Tutuka mean? For us, I mean, you know, it has a lot of meanings, but we took the meaning of Tutuka
Being able to grow. In Zulu, right? In Zulu, we took the Zulu meaning that it means. Did you design the Tutuka man? I did not sure design the tattoo command. Oh, okay. Don’t you miss the tattoo command? I miss him so much. I miss him a lot.
We used to have this joke that if you take her, you know, the top of a champagne corkscrew and twist it out, it’s the tattoo command. So that’s how we designed the tattoo command as a little man from a shampoo store. But yeah. Yeah, because the team did love bubbles.
We did love bubbles. And Fridays was bubbles of the office through teacups. We still call it tea, you know, so we drank champagne out of teacups because we couldn’t afford real champagne glasses at the time. So yes, it’s always the tucati. But yeah, walking into that, you know, it is really intimidating.
But I mean, I think you answer the question. You absolutely be right. I mean, having the experience of understanding the product from scratch and traveling around with someone like Rowan who, you know, empowers you to actually say something like in some meetings he’d walk in and say, I’m not saying anything.
So, you know, if you’d leave it up to you, and so you had to learn. And so in those situations, you know, it was just a matter of explaining the product as best I could, even though there was lots of language issues, cultural issues.
But the ability to know your stuff and also just ask them the right questions. People then eventually forget all those barriers. Yeah. If you’re speaking their language. Their language. Yeah, exactly. What they want. And you’re solving a problem. You’re actually solving a problem.
And I mean, Pakistan is a great, you know, example of that. It’s a market, again, very similar to ours. Not much bank penetration, big population, no access to digital, no credit card, no online spend. So again, like, you know, those, those type, what I, what I have learned is that, you know,
A lot of countries have a lot of similarities. You know, we think we’re, you know, in Africa that the rest of the world is so different. But it’s not really. It’s not. The world eventually is, is very, very small when you kind of break it down into what people,
In terms of what people want, what people need and how you can have relationships. What they value. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like a fairytale type story in terms of just that, that period of growth, right?
And when to to go in from one market to like 50, yeah, a short period of time, but it wasn’t always like that. I mean, you know, we had many postmortems, many printing the emails, circling it with
A red pin and you have to answer, or, you know, that thing after a meeting, like, why didn’t you say anything? Or before you go into the next meeting, like, don’t you dare sit in this meeting and not say anything?
That’s like the worst thing that you could possibly do, you know, and we were like, we often think about that. And, you know, even if you take it out of a career or professional context, right? How you live your life.
The decisions that you make, it’s all guided by upbringing values in terms of how you brought up the people that you were surrounded by or influenced by and that kind of thing. And if you then take those principles and you apply them into a career professional environment,
When Prilin and I look back a lot of the time, it’s like we were raised, you know, by a few people and we were raised through the to-to-go journey and we hold onto a lot of those core principles in terms of how decisions were made, what the, you know, the cultural environment
Was, what is important in terms of leadership and building a team and ensuring, punting diversity and inclusion and changing lives and giving people chances. And that’s all very important, right? What drives you? I think, yeah, I mean, it is a lot of those things.
Like what drives me is the ability to make a difference. So I still believe in the products that we are offering are changing lives. At the same time, I get to, you know, work with people that are culturally different
And again train up juniors, give them the opportunity to make, to change their lives, their family’s lives and make a real difference to people. And then also, you know, I’ve had the ability to now build up a sustainability team and then actually like do a lot of community work.
So I mean, you’ve known me and how much I’ve been trying to do, you know, by myself for many, many years. And then, you know, through the to-to-go journey, we actually were able to create a team and a budget where, you know, we actually get to do like real change for people, whether
It’s through mentorship programs, skills development training, setting up computer labs, you know, even a, we do, we now have our own little soccer team and Alexander’s township called Black Poison. So yeah, it’s a pun to my Black Poison team. So yeah, we support them.
It’s not just a soccer team, but we actually do meals. So they actually, you know, get a proper meal every single day. They train five days a week. So they keep boys off the streets between the ages of 11 and 18. And there’s over, there’s about 66 of them. Wow.
I was introduced to Ashmeeta. Do you know Ashmeeta? Ashmeeta Singh. She works with Saifab, Mandela, and they do these sport infrastructure facilities to keep, you know, boys, children, youth, those communities off of the streets. It would be a great connection. I’ll do that for you. Yeah, 100%. It would be interesting for you.
Yeah, I know. So yeah, I get to do some amazing courses. I have two mentees. They’re now doing their first year in university, both of them. From Susanani. They’re from Susanani. Nice. Like yourselves. Yeah, my kids are now going to be the first in their families to get through university. Sure. That’s incredible.
Yeah. No, my kid, my boy Raymond, he’s got a bursary. He’s going to be an actuary. Wow. That is incredible. Yep. A little boy genius there. Sure. So yes, I told him one day he’s going to pay me back. I paid you one day. That’s meant to your baby. Yeah, exactly.
Like one of those Indian moms, yeah, you’re going to take care of me. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. You have to pay for me one day. And where does that come from? Like, I mean, you know, it’s like, it’s so incredible to hear how that team has grown and that you’ve done so much, right?
But why did you start? Where does that come from, really? I think I’ve always kind of wanted to help people and I know, like, you know, growing up wasn’t always easy for me. I mean, my parents did their best, but I did grow up, you know, in a, like, pretty
Average household, like, you know, my mom was a single mom for a lot of it. So it wasn’t like we always had access to these things and access to the facility. And then I guess, you know, the fact that, like, I’d somehow been very lucky in my life
To, like, sort of land up in these positions, you know, it was like, it was always incredible, like, the type of luck and opportunity that had happened to me. And then based on that, I, you know, I’d always wanted to go back and give that opportunity to other people.
And so it’s always been like something that I’d always wanted to do. So I’ve been lucky enough that I’ve been able to do a lot of it. Yeah. And it’s an opportunity, like, you’re all responsive in my mind.
I’m like, yeah, that’s the Roan Juju, because I feel like it’s the same, it’s the same thing with us. Like, you know, we always circle back to, that was like the inception of, you know, the way that we think about things or do things and get back and, you know, yeah.
I mean, talking about your mom, and again, when you were just describing that, I’m also thinking about just my own experiences, conversations I’ve had very recently with, you know, different females in the industry that are also doing doing really cool things and very few of them come from privileged backgrounds, you know.
And in those conversations, one thing that always comes up is, is Indian tax, obviously. You know, you always have to take care of your family once you’re financially able to like that first job, first paycheck until the day that you, you know, you are there.
I mean, what role, just in, you know, when the industry views you, obviously, you’re a very respected contributor to the industry growth overall. You’ve done incredible things just in your own career, but also for these different programs that you’re describing. And we look at you as a powerful force, right, in the region.
What role does your mom play in that? I mean, you spoke about, you know, her being a single mom, but how did that impact your ability to go after things and remain ambitious and, you know, be a strong female powerhouse, basically. Yeah.
And I think, you know, she was very young when she had me and also very young when she became a single mom. So, you know, she, she did whatever she could to make sure I had whatever I needed, like, you know, whether it was school supplies or getting into certain programs.
So she did her best for me and was always like, you know, you need to be independent and not rely on anyone. I guess it was that sense of instilling in me that as a woman, you can do everything and anything. You didn’t need, you didn’t need a man.
You could do it yourself. So I’ve always been very pro feminist and I think that comes from my mom. And she trusted me, surprised me with a lot of things. She always trusted me, like, whatever I said, she let me do and that’s like, that’s like, like, move overseas.
Like move overseas, like, you know, not do an honors degree, because I said, trust me, this is going to be better for me to, to learn, you know, my learning is going to grow and help me sell the car, give me some money.
I promise I pay you back and trust me, I’ve paid it back. I’m still paying it back. So yeah, I mean, she, she always trusted me and, and gave me the sense of, you know, you can do anything you want to do. Like there was never a limit.
Like I, even though, you know, we may have not, not had it as much, I mean, I was always a dreamer. I was like, I knew I was going to see the world. Like in my mind, you know, 14 years old, like, you know, from East Africa Hills, like, you
Know, single mom house, but like in my mind, I was going to Paris, I was going to Paris in my mind. And, you know, I guess it was that sense of allowing to me to dream, never saying it was
Going to be possible supporting me, you know, helping me when I really needed the money and letting me go. Yeah. So yeah, she’s been, she’s been a rock and she’s still there. Yeah. You, you’re still paying for it. You future paying. She never lets me forget about it.
And I mean, like, you know, when you look at the industry today and you look at all these founder stories and all these new up and coming fintechs and you look at the growth of fintech, I mean, like, you know, we always say this, to took a fintech before fintech was a thing.
Before fintech was a thing. Yeah. Way before fintech was a thing. But when you look at the industry today, like, what is your, what is your view on it? You know, like, do you think that we’re building and by we’re, I don’t mean scale specifically,
But I mean, you know, the industry, do we, do you think that we’re building and particularly African fathers? Do you think that we’re building long-term sustainable businesses? Or do you think that a lot of fintechs in the space are caught in the hype, right?
The second part is, how would you view or compare an African fintech to the likes of a European fintech or, you know, American fintech and their solutions and services, the way they do business, the way they grow? What is, what is our strength? Okay.
So first part of the question, I’m kind of at two minds about the industry as it is to be blunt. Yeah. There’s a lot of you entrance out there. And I think, you know, well, some of, some of them are really good and I think we’ll go very far and make a difference.
You know, you, at the same time, there’s a lot of these fly by nights who are just like, you know, got some money and they’re like, well, I’ll become a fintech and, you know, they don’t have proper planning or solutions, but, you know, are just trying to get funded
And they see these, you know, international stories and assume, okay, you know, Africa’s next best thing. So absolutely everyone and everybody’s calling themselves a fintech right now. Inclines we’ve had for years and suddenly fintechs, it’s like a rebrand of the industry. Everybody’s a fintech.
However, they are such amazing stories coming out, you know, you’ve seen some of the people we all know that have known for years that have done really well, you know, you’re looking at your McCrews and what they’ve done, the Mama Money team, yo-yo, formerly Y group,
You know, all of those guys, you know, they’re all fintechs and it’s not that they fly by nights because people don’t realize how long they’ve been around for, you know. We’ve been doing stuff with them for 10 years plus and all of them have done like amazingly well drawing into other countries.
One pragmatic step at a time. Exactly. So in that, so I have to respect what a lot of them are trying to do out there and I think that it’s going to serve them well in the future. But yeah, there are just everyone’s a fintech these days.
Like when people tell me they’re a fintech, I’m like, okay, yeah, we’ve seen that too recently. Yes, we know. We all know. So everybody is a fintech. So like I’m like, oh, okay, that’s cool. But the thing is, and when we sold to Tutuka, you know, we had two series of investments
In 2014 and 2018 and then 2021 was fully acquired by Salt Nautaya UK based and the merger happened. And post acquisition, I was also like, what should I do? You know, there is no longer to Tutuka, you know, should I start something? And that was very emotional for a lot of people.
It was for a lot of people. It was personal. It was personal. You know, it felt like, you know, we kind of, you know, we’re giving up a baby at that point in time. It was like, you know, the African story. It was the African story.
And I mean, you know, people don’t know because we’ve always been a behind the scenes brand back in plumbers. We’re not allowed to even ask the bank for a logo at a launch event because even if they said yes, we would say no. Exactly. We never put our name out there.
We never spoke about our investments and how well we’ve done and, you know, how many countries we’ve managed to penetrate by that point. So yeah, so by that acquisition time and everything that happened, and then I was also at a crossroads
About where should I be, what should I be doing now because, you know, the Tutuka story was done at that point. And then, you know, I thought very hard about it and there were lots of options on the table.
And then, so I, you know, chose to kind of stay in South Africa and stay with the team here to to run the Africa side and South Africa in particular, but then growing into, you know, other African markets, because this answer the second part of your question, I mean, why Africa?
I still believe that there is so much opportunity on this continent. Yes, the UK, US numbers are huge, they’re massive, you know, one deal is like millions of dollars and stuff. But the competition is so heavy in that and there’s just, it’s not like a need as such
For people as it is in the African context. The need is still here for a lot of these solutions. In the European and the US markets, it’s not a need. It’s more like an innovation, okay, cool, something different. But this, but you’ve got so many options, so many players out there.
I think it’s very difficult to crack it. I mean, obviously, you know, there are those great stories, Revolute is a good story, but then you have the, then you have the, you know, real issues like the rails, what happens? So, you know, there’s still a lot of trouble there.
Whereas in the African continent, and I always say this, I still feel like it’s a virgin continent. As much as we penetrated into Tutuka, there’s still so much opportunity out there, especially in the Spentech and especially in the payment space. Yeah.
We’ve got a lot of challenges in terms of, you know, regulatory, everything we know, the regulation is a lot harder here. You know, just the banking systems and people are a lot harder to work with. There’s this whole push to, on soil in every country, which, you know, is a very difficult play.
However, the solutions here can make a difference to people. There’s still, there’s still that options for fintechs to be able to penetrate that market because it’s still, you know, the banks are not getting there, it’s undeserved. Like in every single country, there’s like a huge opportunity, I mean, you know, not
Everyone’s going to be safari-com, and let’s be honest, everyone says, okay, safari-com, but it’s not everyone’s going to be safari-com, but there is a whole other layer of people that you can actually get to. And so that’s why I chose to be here and chose to actually do this in Africa.
And I mean, like you saw, right, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the first product in a market. Absolutely. Because there is such a long journey to walk with that customer or with that program in terms of taking it one step at a time and, you know, packing on additional value, wait
For adoption, and once you have that adoption, pack on the next, you know, value proposition because it enhances the existing product that you’ve used to retain a customer, you know, and then you’re providing them additional access or additional, I mean, growth, right, from an experience perspective.
And I think that that’s also something that sometimes we don’t see. And in some cases, I do see that, like in South Africa, I feel that we are just over-engineering, you know, use cases for people who are already served, where products are working and it
Is quite unnecessary, in my honest opinion, to put that effort and attention on just over-engineering products and wrapping it up as a fintech solution as opposed to targeting the disparity, targeting the unbanked, targeting township communities and the informal sector and getting products
Into those places where those people are not even participating in the economy, you know. And I think just as an industry as a whole, we should be driving home that point, you know, a lot more solid as opposed to praising these over-engineered solutions, the market that’s what values are really adding. Exactly.
And who’s paying for that? Exactly. And then 100% agree. And I mean, in a lot of the markets here, it’s not the most innovation is not going to win. It’s the utilities, like how easy is it to use and you’re right, it’s 100% solving and
You’re not going to hit the big thing immediately. You’re not Sepharicum. Sepharicum happened because of a particular reason and time. And they solved a problem. They solved a problem. Exactly. It was a particular need. Exactly.
So like, do you know how many, and I’m sure you get this, do you know how many people come to me and say, I want to be Sepharicum? Sure. Okay. Let’s start. Let’s start at the beginning. One step at a time. One step at a time. What’s your customer?
Do you have a customer? Yeah. I’m going to solve the underbank. That is the one thing that people say I’m going to solve with the underbank. And it’s like, South Africa is banked. Yeah. It’s the actual utility. What are you solving for? It’s the use cases. Yeah. I mean, let’s be honest.
We have public transport of taxis and are you going to get taxi drivers to take a credit card? No, you’re not. Or a card payment. Yeah. And then use cases, like you can’t blanket statements, you’re going to do everything at once.
Find your niche if you’re a fintech and then solve in the simplest manner the actual use case. And I think people often underestimate the actual complexities of the problem. Like you open LinkedIn one day and it’s like, okay, the Senegalese government shut down
The internet because of elections and it’s like, okay, but you are trying to push an app with those digital products, like how are they going to access that? You can’t control the government shutting down the internet. We have a mega low trading problem here.
And people underestimate the impact it has on the products and services we’re providing to customers. Africa is a complex market and it needs complex solutions. But I think you’re spot on in terms of find your niche and dominate it because then you’re
Truly solving and then you take that and you deploy it in the next markets because that’s what works. That’s what works. Proven recipe. You make it work in one space, then take it to the next, don’t blanket approach. Blankets don’t work here. Yeah, I know.
And it’s, as you say, Africa is a different beast. There’s never dull moments in Africa between our regulators and governments and things. Never a dull moment. Never a dull moment. So it’s always interesting. What are you looking forward to? We’re in March. It is International Women’s Month.
I’m sure you’ve got some cool things planned. But what’s exciting you about what you’re seeing in the region and some of your next steps, both personally but also within now paymentology? So I think from a region-specific and fintech space itself, I think it is an exciting time
Because, as I said, there’s just so many fintechs out there and there’s so many things happening in terms of the market growth and people trying to do some form of solutions. And as much as we give our government and lots of governments flack, I think governments
Are also waking up to the idea of digitization and the ability of trying to, as strict and rigorous as they are, yes. There’s actually some nice opportunities I’ve particularly seen where they’re coming to the party to say we need to actually control this better by putting proper solutions.
And so I think that is quite interesting and it’s not just in South Africa, I’ve seen it happen in the other markets where the governments are mandating certain things around how grants are paid out, where it has to be digitized.
So there’s a lot of corruption, as everyone knows, so they are serious about it and some markets are getting serious about it. Then there’s that move to digital solutions. And then you can see some of the giants are coming into these markets. Amazon opening up in Cape Town, Google Hub coming in.
What do you make of that? I think it’s interesting. Look, I think it’s good because it shows that they see the need in these continents and they can see that it’s going to be the future of where a lot of spend will happen.
And I mean, I’ve been listening to a lot of economists as well about the future of the world and the thing is, when it comes to population and Africa having a very young population, when it comes to the future, a lot of the workforce is going to come from this continent.
So those big companies that are coming in early are taking the risk that this is going to be the next best thing for it because a lot of the first world is saturated, their populations are aging, so a lot of the workforce is coming from here.
So I think that’s why they’re coming in. They’re taking the leap and the risk of it, which I think will serve them in the future. And then for all of us that are still here in the continent, I think it’s a good thing. It just opens it up a bit more.
It will encourage the reduction on pricing of a lot of things over here because there are some monopolies at play, so it just makes it a more free market so everybody will end up benefiting. Of course, it’ll make it difficult for a lot of local players as well that I have had monopolies,
But I mean, the world is changing free markets. And to be honest with you, I think that the market size and the need of the continent is large enough for a couple of players to play in and still do really well, so long
As they are solving problems, making things easier, simpler, more convenient, accessible. I mean, not just in our space, but in various other spaces, which we see all of these developing use cases and developing business and new entrants and the adoption of AI and the introduction of AI in some other places.
It’s all about how we as a people evolve and with that evolution, our needs evolved and use cases evolve. And I think that over time, there’s a lot in store for this region, but also, don’t
Get it wrong, there’s a lot for the world to learn from us in terms of how we’ve been enabled. Hopefully one day in future, we can say we did something different and we got it right, which is really cool.
So Disha, as we wrap up, there’s also a lot of young professionals in this environment. There’s a very cool curiosity, but interest to move into this tech, fintech payment space because it’s just growing so rapidly and it has been for quite some time and it will continue to do that.
What’s your advice for young professionals who are either inside of their organizations looking to grow and take big leaps and learn more and take some risks, but also to those that are wanting to follow a passion or dream, step out of their jobs and start a business. What would you say to them?
Yeah, I’d say, be hungry, so be hungry about what you want to do and ambitious about it. But at the same time, like we’ve been speaking, find your niche, just don’t do something for the namesake of I’m doing it by myself or I want to be a CEO now because I’ve been in
Something for years because if you have a good enough idea, it’ll work. So the idea’s got to be there, stay true to what you want to do or stay true to the idea. It may not change the world tomorrow, but if it is going to change the world and you’ve
Got to keep at it and it’s going to take time, everything doesn’t happen. People read these one in a million stories and assume it’s an overnight success. I’m going to get funded next month, like I opened my business today, I’m going to get
Funded in like two weeks and I’m taking over Amazon, I’m going to be the world. It doesn’t happen like that. It is a journey, so be prepared for the hard knocks, be prepared to stick it out because
There will be hard times, but if you’re hitting your heart in the right place, then you’ve got something. So yeah, that’s what I would have to say. I mean, it is a really fun environment to be in, it’s ever changing, so don’t be afraid of change.
If you’re like somebody who’s quite regimented and doesn’t believe in change, then this is not the space for you. Yeah. So you have to work. Work for a bank, you mean. I’m sorry. Yeah, exactly. I’m joking. I love the banks. For a network. We love the network. I love the network.
I love the network. I love the network. Yeah. No, I love that advice. I mean, we have Sineshne in the room today. She’s just joined our team very recently, also Brown Girl from Peter Merrittsburg. She’s a makeup artist by profession, studied somatology, and now she’s in the big, big
Cool world of fintech and going to help us do big things as scale. But thank you very much for your time. It’s been a great conversation. Really appreciate it. And just, you know, it’s also been a really great journey with you.
I do think that we need a part two, because we didn’t talk about the fact that I married somebody I met at the Tutuka and nobody knew until we got engaged, because that’s an achievement for me. You know, it’s so great. But yeah, thanks very much. And like, I hope you enjoyed this.
Thanks for having me. It’s always great catching up with you guys and I’m really excited about what you guys are doing. Thank you. And congratulations on taking the leap and again, I know the hard work will pay off. So thank you. Good luck guys.
1 Comment
Great Episode, many of the stories were similar to my experience at the competitor at the time and aligns to some of my journey in the industry… Brings back so many memories