{"id":40886,"date":"2013-06-28T13:36:37","date_gmt":"2013-06-28T11:36:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=40886"},"modified":"2013-06-28T13:54:00","modified_gmt":"2013-06-28T11:54:00","slug":"i-was-forced-into-appchat-liquidation-holdsworth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/40886\/i-was-forced-into-appchat-liquidation-holdsworth\/","title":{"rendered":"I was forced into AppChat liquidation: Holdsworth"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Holdsworth<\/a>\u00a0says he has been forced liquidate his start-up venture\u00a0AppChat<\/a>, due to the vast amounts of capital it has consumed amid an ongoing legal dispute with a former employer and listed ICT firm Reunert.<\/p>\n

Holdsworth said that with the\u00a0company\u00a0having to close its doors, “the real\u00a0tragedy\u00a0is that 15 people (AppChat employees) are out on the street and\u00a0haven’t\u00a0found jobs”.<\/p>\n

Reunert originally brought an application in March 2012, in which it sought to enforce a contractual restraint of trade against\u00a0Holdsworth\u00a0and obtain interdicts preventing him and AppChat from ever competing against it.<\/p>\n

The case was founded on an allegation by Reunert that AppChat was intending to directly compete with a mobile VoIP application that\u00a0Nashua ECN<\/a>\u00a0were developing and had planned to launch imminently.<\/p>\n

Holdsworth was the founder and CEO of ECN (Nashua), a provider of IP-based next generation network services. He sold that business to\u00a0Reunert\u00a0in July 2011.<\/p>\n

He denied Reunert\u2019s allegations, claiming that ECN had never traded in the mobile market and that its entire business was in the fixed line market.<\/p>\n

Holdsworth\u00a0was granted leave to appeal following\u00a0a ruling delivered in the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein\u00a0on 25 January.<\/p>\n

In a brief interview with BusinessTech on Friday (28 June), Holdsworth said: “I was forced into this\u00a0liquidation as they (Reunert) have moved to out liquidate me…I’m in a position where I cant trade until September 2014.”<\/p>\n

Holdsworth said he has pumped as much as R10\u00a0million\u00a0into AppChat, and between R2 – R2.5 million in legal fees.<\/p>\n

On the legal side Holdsworth stressed: “I don’t give up, and absolutely will win this case. There is a lot more to come, this is just the tip of the iceberg.”<\/p>\n

He said that he intends to file multiple court applications in the week commencing 1 July, “that will shock South Africa”.<\/p>\n

More on AppChat and Reunert<\/h3>\n

I have \u201csmoking gun\u201d evidence: Holdsworth<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Reunert hits back at AppChat<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Reunert has committed fraud: Holdsworth<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Holdsworth ready to sacrifice all in Reunert battle<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

AppChat\u2019s Holdsworth: \u201cCowboys don\u2019t cry\u201d<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Holdsworth to appeal AppChat ruling<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

AppChat to forge ahead?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Holdsworth says he has been forced liquidate his start-up venture AppChat, due to the vast amounts of capital it has consumed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":25141,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1878,26,66,2433,555,1707],"class_list":["post-40886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-appchat","tag-headline","tag-john-holdsworth","tag-nashua-ecn","tag-reunert","tag-voip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40886","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\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40886"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40900,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40886\/revisions\/40900"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}