Interview: Hello Group CEO Nadir Khamissa

Loading player...
In this episode of the podcast, Duncan McLeod sits down with Hello Group co-founder and CEO Nadir Khamissa for an update on the company's growth in the past few years and its ambitions in the financial services market.
Founded about 13 years ago by Khamissa and his brother Shaazim, Hello Group has built itself up into a major player in the telecommunications and financial services market by serving mainly migrant workers looking for an affordable way to communicate and do cross-border money transfers.
Khamissa, an actuary and former MD of global equity/derivatives trading at Deutsche Bank, worked on several major projects, including listing Telkom on the Johannesburg and New York stock exchanges in 2003 in his time there.
In the past three years, Hello Group has expanded across emerging markets in Africa and Asia and now employs about a thousand people - up from 300 three years ago.
It was the first company in South Africa to receive an independent money transfer operator licence from the Reserve Bank. It now has big plans to expand its financial services offerings in South Africa next year.
In the podcast, Khamissa explains why he thinks the financial services sector in South Africa is "ripe of re-energisation" and the role he sees Hello Group playing in this regard, particularly in the informal segment.
29 Nov 2018 English South Africa Technology · Business

Other recent episodes

TCS | Charge’s R1.8-billion bet on an off-grid EV future

South Africa has fewer than 400 public electric vehicle charging stations – up from zero just 15 years ago – and EV adoption remains stubbornly slow. Yet Charge, formerly known as Zero Carbon Charge, is betting big that a coast-to-coast network of off-grid, renewable-powered charging stations is exactly what’s needed…
18 May 37 min

TCS+ | The Up&Up Group on the hidden cost of AI

Companies large and small are pouring capital into AI projects, chasing the promise of efficiency, speed and scale. But as Jason Harrison, chief operating officer of The Up&Up Group, argues in this episode of TechCentral’s TCS+, the upfront price tag tells only a fraction of the story – and many…
13 May 46 min

TCS+ | The retirement decision most South Africans get wrong

What happens to your retirement savings when you leave an employer is one of the most consequential financial decisions most South Africans will make – and one of the most commonly mishandled. In this podcast conversation with Mpho Chitapi, 10X Investments senior investment consultant Michael Rossouw sets out what should…
6 May 55 min

TCS | The Cape Town start-up listening for TB with AI

AI Diagnostics, a Cape Town-based med-tech company that has built an AI-powered stethoscope designed to detect tuberculosis, recently raised R85-million in a pre-series-A funding round. In this episode of the TechCentral Show (TCS), Nkosinathi Ndlovu speaks to the company’s CEO, Braden van Breda, about the funding round and its mission…
4 May 36 min