By Fiona Wakelin and Nicole Forrest
When he started wiGroup, Bevan Ducasse wanted to be at the forefront of the move towards a cashless society. He’s done just that with wiGroup, the mobile technology platform that’s revolutionising the South African retail space.
This is part two of a three-part series. Click here to read part one: From inspiration to implementation.
From four friends working in a flat to a thriving business with multi-national corporate clients, wiGroup is a true entrepreneurial success story. We asked CEO Bevan Ducasse how he defines the word entrepreneur and what makes wiGroup remarkable.
“An entrepreneur is someone who goes out on a limb to start something new, which is sustainable and profitable – always keeping in mind the crucial balance between people and profit. Business is driven by a need and a solution – and technology is a servant to that need. We have a wonderful team and pride ourselves on innovating prior to trends, riding the wave.”
We pride ourselves on creating remarkable solutions. We like to think out of the box as to how we can best leverage mobile to enhance your solution. For example: digital coupons. We have moved couponing from paper to the cloud. Digital payments, loyalty and rewards are all linked to mobile via one scan or one tap.
Another example is mobile commerce. “We engineered a mobile commerce stack fulfilling a mobile commerce transaction in under an hour with minimal investment, leveraging off what already exists.
“The biggest, most precious thing we can buy people is time, saving time and energy. We are in the business of decluttering lives.
“Our core sector is retail. We focus on adding value on the transacting side of business – facilitating money transfers, mobile payments, loyalty spend and rewards. We have re-engineered loyalty commerce and digital loyalty programmes via mobile so that the customer experience is seamless.”
Read part 1 of the wiGroup blog series, Innovation to implementation, here.
