16
LOCKDOWN Issue 2020
PROFILE
Pain points can help FIRMS FIND JOY Valde Ferradaz has traversed the forests of Papua New Guinea, caught rickety Russian planes to far-flung lands and has brokered deals in hostile territories, side-stepping bandits, drunk gold miners and prostitutes. It has all been part of his lifelong career in telecoms and through all of this, one issue has remained his focus
T
he CEO of uMhlanga based technology company, MVN-X, hones in on pain points, customer pain points. It is the raw data he has always relied on to fix a host of issues, whether working at Vodafone, Telkom, Cell C or Digicel. Ferradaz has spent 17 years working outside of South Africa and joined MVN-X – a subsidiary of the Ignition Group – in 2018. Throughout his career 56-yearold Ferradaz has taken a keen interest in big brands and their relationship with their customers. How brands add value in a bearish economy is especially important as consumer spend shrinks and companies battle it out for a diminishing share of thin wallets. Ferradaz ran a telecoms consultancy before Ignition founders, brothers Sean and Donovan Bergsma, roped him into their enterprise which has grown from a garage start-up in Durban to a technology giant. Ferradaz wants to help MVN-X secure a bigger share of the global mobile virtual network operator
market, which analysts value at billions. It is a massively expanding business. A mobile virtual network operator is a telecommunications service provider that does not own the network infrastructure it uses to provide services to its customers. It enters into agreements with networks like Cell C, Vodacom and MTN to get bulk access to services at wholesale rates, then it sets competitive retail prices and tailors products to suit its customers. MVN-X builds and supplies turnkey systems to mobile virtual network operators, a field that is growing in South Africa by the day. MVN-X, for example, enables retail giants like Mr Price, Clientele Insurance and Standard Bank to provide their own mobile virtual services. MVN-X provides the systems, administration and processes for these big firms to offer their customers branded SIM cards and a host of value-add
RIGHT: VALDE FERRADAZ – THE CEO OF MVN-X – AIMS TO SECURE A BIGGER SHARE OF THE GLOBAL MOBILE VIRTUAL NETWORK OPERATOR MARKET.
