EZRA - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Board of Directors
Allan Green is a seasoned entrepreneur and technology investor for over 20+ years. He has transformed numerous companies in his capacity of advisor, investor and board member, including industry leaders like Gemalto and Ingenico.
Career Highlights
Over 30 years in the consumer finance space, in South Africa, Middle East and the broader African continent - with 15+ years in director, C-level or Executive roles.
Andrew has been involved in FinTech for over 12 years, providing consultancy services to FinTech businesses in Africa whilst also co-founding South Africa's first digital BNPL business, MobiCred.
More recently, Andrew was an Executive within the MTN FinTech structure where he was responsible for driving the strategy for and building MTN's BankTech vertical, including a real-time scoring, rules engine and account management cloud solution, developing FSP/Banking funding relationships, product development, credit risk and predictive analytics.
Career Highlights
Led 5 mobile wallets operations across Africa and Asia, up to 15 million active users
Nicholas Smalle is a Partner at Apis. He has been with Apis for 6 years and has led on transactions spanning Insurance, Asset Management and Payments. Prior to joining Apis, he was at Old Mutual where he was responsible for OM's Strategic Investment Fund, an on-balance sheet investment vehicle that focused on the expansion of Old Mutual's operations into key African markets. Preceding that he was at Standard Chartered and McKinsey and Company.
Peter de Caluwe is the Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Thunes. Under his leadership Thunes has transformed into a world leading fintech that powers payments for the world's fastest-growing businesses. Peter drives Thunes through rapid business and geographical expansion, challenging the status quo for cross border payments.Previously he was CEO Payments at Naspers and also Ogone (now Ingenico ePayments).
Rotimi Oyekanmi has over 33 years' experience in Financial Services, private equity investing, M&A; advisory, and senior management with leading institutions in Africa.
Prior to joining Apis, he was Chairman of RenMoney until 2016, Group Head, Ecobank Capital Nigeria until 2013, CEO of Renaissance Group West Africa and MD of Renaissance Partners (Private Equity arm of Renaissance Group).
Rotimi was with African Capital Alliance (ACA) for 18 years, where he served as Chief Investment Officer. He was also responsible for establishing the SME Fund for ACA in 2001 and was CEO of the Fund from inception, as well as being a Principal in Capital Alliance Private Equity Fund (Nigeria's first structured fund).
Rotimi lives in Lagos, Nigeria and enjoys providing business advice to financial institutions and other businesses.
Career Highlights
Chartered Accountant with over 15 years experience leading teams within the FinTech, Telecommunications, TV & VOD and retail industries in Africa, Asia and Europe.
Sergi Herrero is currently serving as Board Member of MerchantE, an end-to-end payment platform that processes +$20B/year and provides full stack ecommerce services to SMEs. He is also a Member of the Supervisory Board of Intix, a rapidly growing company that provides real time actionable transaction data for banks and securities houses around the world.
Mr. Herrero previously served as Group co-Chief Executive Officer and Member of the Supervisory Board of VEON, a global telecommunications holding with +200M subscribers and traded in NASDAQ and Euronext. Before that, Mr. Herrero served as Global Director of Payments and Commerce Partnerships at Facebook, where he helped to build and expand Facebook's successful payments and commerce business. Previous to that, Mr. Herrero held senior executive positions at the financial services company Square and the French bank BNP-Paribas.
Mr. Herrero holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and a Master of Science in Telecommunication Management both from Ramon Llull University in Barcelona. He also completed a program in Angel Investing and Venture Capital at Stanford University.
Career Highlights
Over 25 years experience leading technology teams in the telecommunications and software industries across Europe, Asia and Africa.
Sunil Sabharwal has spent over two decades as a board member and C-suite executive for global companies like GE Capital, First Data Corporation, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and Coopers and Lybrand. He has also invested in and worked with leading global fintech corporations such as European payment services company Ogone (now part of Ingenico), Paysafe and IRIS Analytics.
Career Highlights
Led and delivered 30+ micro-loan projects in Africa, Asia, Middle East and Europe.