Cape Venture Partners led a management buy-out of Psitek Pty Ltd, a leading South African telecommunications company in October 2009. Psitek developed solutions using cellular and wireless technologies to provide access to voice, services and information services to people in under serviced areas in the world. Elprom Electronic Product Manufacturers, one of South Africa's leading contract manufacturers with 210 employees, was a Psitek subsidiary. The investment was a turnaround opportunity, which ultimately led to a restructure of the group, spinning out some non-core businesses and ultimately a liquidation of the holding company.Our consortium has re-constituted the vending and product business, and is also currently managing the factory pending a sale. The project was immensely challenging but a huge learning curve too.

Another initiative that CVP is closely involved in is Renewable Energy, via our investment in Texforce. This has the potential to be a significant growth area for us.

A Chartered Accountant (SA) by profession, I have worked in mainly media related industries in the past. I was a founder-member of the Crescent Consortium, which bought KFM Radio in 1996, and then on-sold the station in 2000 to New Africa (NAIL). Since then I have invested in some IT start-ups, one notable success being Clickatell (Pty) Ltd. My skills lie in the combination of finance, media and technology, with a strong entrepreneurial thread running through.