Kruben Pillay, the newly-appointed Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) at Datafree Technologies
Datafree mobile connectivity for enterprises and expansion into Africa are among the major growth opportunities for Datafree Technologies over the next five years.
This is according to Kruben Pillay, the newly-appointed Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) at Datafree Technologies, South Africa’s premium SaaS reverse billed data specialists.
Kruben brings over 15 years’ experience in telecoms with senior roles across Telkom, BCX and Vodacom. He most recently headed up the Wholesale product division at Vodacom where he was responsible for first-to-market developments and played a crucial role on strategic projects, including data connectivity in Africa with Google and Facebook.
Kruben says he made the move after observing Datafree Technologies’ phenomenal growth over the past three years in South Africa.
“They established their growth through a key distribution partnership with MTN, that grew a new product revenue line for MTN, and in my view only scratched the surface of opportunities in the market,” he says. “Datafree has not yet tapped into the vast array of customer opportunities available in SA.”
Datafree Technologies has enjoyed strong growth since its launch in 2019, reaching over 16 million end users, processing 6,7 petabytes of reverse billed data across all MNOs, all this by accessing just a fraction of the South African market opportunity.
The company is geared to move from a startup to a scale-up, on track to surpass the R200 million revenue mark this year.
Kruben believes a key opportunity lies in the enterprise mobile market.
“Large enterprises tend to use Access Point Name (APN) products to enable hybrid and mobile workforces. This can be cumbersome with SIM management, logistics and overhead costs to contend with. Nobody was looking at simple, reverse billed data as an alternative virtual APN product for enterprises. With Datafree’s growth and product offering, it stood out to me there was a large new market opportunity. Datafree Technologies has the right innovative product at the right time and is now capturing market share because Datafree Connect is simple, efficient, flexible, precise and cost efficient. It’s a world first game changer.”
The Datafree Connect solution, launched in South Africa last year, is designed to address the challenge of enabling an enterprise only to pay for the data their mobile workforce need to do their jobs, and no more.
Datafree Connect allows organisations to quickly and easily set up datafree workspaces so the corporate apps, third-party apps, and websites that employees need to use to do their jobs, work datafree – on their own devices, on all mobile networks.
Datafree Connect is simple to implement and manage, and ensures employees never run out of data for the work-related apps they need.
Kruben says the concept is a win-win-win. “It benefits enterprises, consumers and MNO’s.
These benefits have resulted in queries from elsewhere in Africa and informed Datafree’s plans to expand across the continent.
Kruben says: “Our African expansion strategy is in the development phase. We have already received requests to offer our services in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria because it is the top tier solution of its kind in this environment. Access to data in Africa is crucial for improving lives, it allows consumers to connect to services and opportunities, such as education, government and access to the global environment. Major OTT players are investing in undersea cables and supporting the growth of MNO infrastructure because they see the potential for increased data utilisation across the continent. We firmly believe that Datafree’s technology can significantly enhance the data penetration rate to consumers. Ultimately, consumers will benefit and enterprises can achieve substantial growth in their businesses.”
Kruben also plans to ramp up Datafree Technologies’ sales capacity as he focuses on the business’s next phase of growth and development of new sales channels.
