{"id":24751,"date":"2012-10-22T15:31:36","date_gmt":"2012-10-22T13:31:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=24751"},"modified":"2012-10-23T08:37:42","modified_gmt":"2012-10-23T06:37:42","slug":"knott-craig-jnr-and-mxit-more-details-emerge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/24751\/knott-craig-jnr-and-mxit-more-details-emerge\/","title":{"rendered":"Knott-Craig jnr and Mxit: more details emerge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alan Knott-Craig Jnr<\/a> unexpectedly stepped down as Mxit<\/a> CEO and World of Avatar CEO on 18 October, citing differences between himself and his shareholders. More information has now emerged about Knott-Craig\u2019s departure.<\/p>\n

Last week Knott-Craig said in a press statement that \u201cwhile the shareholders and I share the same vision, we differ on how to get there. Therefore, I agreed to go my own way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The main conflict seems to be between Knott-Craig and one of the company\u2019s largest shareholders Paul Harris<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to a well placed source Harris lost faith in Knott-Craig to lead Mxit, and said that either his shares should be bought out or Knott-Craig should step down as CEO. The outcome was that Knott-Craig had to step down after shareholders agreed to invest more money into the business.<\/p>\n

A Business Times report<\/a> also said that \u201cPaul Harris was unhappy with Mr Knott-Craig\u2019s performance and style and was only prepared to invest his share of R100m \u2014 which shareholders are ploughing into the company \u2014 if the CEO resigned\u201d.<\/p>\n

According to two independent sources Knott-Craig\u2019s performance was at the centre of the conflict between Mxit CEO and Harris.<\/p>\n

Mxit\u2019s lackluster financial performance, and its battle to grow amidst stiff competition from competing platforms like BlackBerry Messenger<\/a> and WhatsApp<\/a> are rumoured to have played a part in Harris\u2019 decision.<\/p>\n

There were also suggestions that Mxit\u2019s true user numbers were not the same as the 10 million claimed South African users.<\/p>\n

Mxit told BusinessTech last week that their \u201cmonthly active user number moves up and down between 9.3 million and 10 million\u201d. However, an industry insider places the number of active Mxit users in South Africa at closer to five million.<\/p>\n

Questions have also been raised about World of Avatar and Mxit\u2019s acquisition streak \u2013 partly because these businesses are not generating much revenue and profit.<\/p>\n

Francois Swart<\/a>, the current CFO, will act as the interim CEO. Mxit will be recruiting a new CEO and other new executives to drive expansion at the company.<\/p>\n

Mxit was asked for feedback about these issues, but the company said that neither it, nor the role-players (Knott-Craig and Harris) would like to comment.<\/p>\n

Related articles<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alan Knott-Craig Jnr leaves Mxit<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Mxit: on the money<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Mxit-Motribe deal details<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Mxit acquires Motribe<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Standard Bank and Mxit launch mobile money service<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alan Knott-Craig junior\u2019s sudden departure from Mxit and World of Avatar seems to be underpinned by a lack of trust in his abilities from shareholders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6261,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[43,4414,26,1573,4413,2118,1280],"class_list":["post-24751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-alan-knott-craig","tag-francois-swart","tag-headline","tag-mxit","tag-paul-harris","tag-whatsapp","tag-world-of-avatar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24751"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24777,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24751\/revisions\/24777"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}