Driving a revolution
PROFILE: Uber’s Alon Lits
The actuary turned investment banker was looking for nascent opportunities in technology, and when Uber came calling, it ticked all his boxes
Though Alon Lits runs the industry-changing technology company Uber in sub-Saharan Africa, he is far from being the clichéd techie who spent years grappling with code before his big breakthrough came.Lits (32) was an investment banker before he took the helm of Uber just as it started in this country in August 2013. As a trained actuary, he understands the value of using data to make business decisions.When Uber started in Johannesburg, Lits’s team worked from a guesthouse in Sandton, where "driver partners", as the company calls them, would come in for information sessions and meet potential partners. Now they work from offices in Parktown North.Despite qualifying as an actuary, Lits never worked as one. Instead, he was employed for 5½ years at Investec at its leveraged finance arm. "But given that I had a technical rather than a business background, I went on to study an MBA at Insead," he tells the Financial Mail. "Ideally I wanted to do something entrepreneurial."I had a few ide...
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