Karooooo chief executive Zak Calisto is officially a dollar billionaire, with his holdings in the company now worth $1.1 billion. South Africa’s Calisto directly owns 65% of the Karooooo group’s shares, with another 10% of the company tied to him through a standing agreement, giving him beneficial voting rights, according to Business Tech.
Last Thursday, the company carried a market capitalization of $1.65 billion. That put Calisto’s direct stake at over $1 billion and made him the eighth member of the billionaire club in South Africa and Africa’s newest billionaire.
Karooooo started as Cartrack in 2001, helping carjack victims recover their vehicles in South Africa. Calisto had at the time dropped out of actuarial science at Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand, done his military service and worked in banking before deciding to start his own business after seeing the rise in auto thefts in South Africa.
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Launching Karooooo as a stolen vehicle recovery company in South Africa, Cartrack expanded and began offering tracking, data analytics, and business intelligence. It was listed on the JSE in 2014. From South Africa, it also soon expanded into the rest of Africa, before entering Europe, Asia, and the Americas.
With a customer base of 2.3 million, mostly in South Africa, the company is now headquartered in Singapore and operates in 24 countries.
The name of the company is inspired by Calisto’s love of the semi-desert Karoo region in South Africa.
“…I am South African, and I love the Karoo,” he said of his company’s name.
Born in Portugal, Calisto grew up in the nation’s former colony of Mozambique, where his father worked as a government official. After the colonial government was toppled, Calisto and his family moved to South Africa as political refugees, Bloomberg reported.
Before Cartrack, Calisto worked for Netstar, one of Karooooo’s rivals, as an independent distributor. He then started Cartrack with just $5 and went on to finance the business through cellular contract reseller deals.
Today, he is one of eight billionaires in South Africa, with the others being Johann Rupert, Patrice Motsepe, Nicky Oppenheimber, Koos Bekker, Michiel le Roux, Christo Wiese and Jannie Mouton. His feat has also increased Africa’s billionaire count to 23.
Africa had 22 billionaires on its Forbes list as of March this year, with South Africa having the highest number of billionaires.
Nigeria and Egypt followed with four each, with three coming from Morocco, one from Algeria, one from Zimbabwe, and one from Tanzania.
