Pretorius met Kappers, then an Executive MBA student at UCT GSB, during the institution’s
implementation of Wyzetalk to host its student community’s online interactions. The platform, combined with open innovation and systems thinking, inspired Kappers to write his thesis on it, and he joined the newly unbundled Wyzetalk as CEO in 2011, taking the product to market for the first time.
The rest (as they say) is history. Wyzetalk is now the resident collaboration, communication, ideation, survey and broadcasting tool at many leading South African companies, including EOH, Cash Crusaders, Altron, Telesure and Deli Spices. It has 30 000 paying users, with AngloGold Ashanti its largest customer.
The company was listed by CNN as one of the top 10 African start-ups that rocked 2014, and by CB Insights as one of the top 13 tech companies to watch in Africa in 2015.
Well done Gys. We used it extensively as the EMBA14 class.