In this What’s Next with Aki Anastasiou interview, Herotel Co-Founder and CEO Van Zyl Botha unpacks the company’s history and its mission in South Africa.

Botha is a qualified Chartered Accountant with a Bachelor of Accounting degree from the University of Stellenbosch, as well as Honours (UNISA) and a CTA Accounting.

His career started in 2006, when he founded FinFive, a corporate finance company.

At the age of 29 he became the Financial Director (FD) and CFO of Randgold and Exploration, the youngest FD for a JSE Main Board listed company at the time, during this time he completed the JSE’s Sponsor development course at WITS business school.

Later in his career he was admitted as a Fellow at The African Leadership Initiative, part of The Aspen Global Leadership Network, supported by the Aspen Institute.

He is also a member of the Young Presidents’ Organisation (YPO), the world’s largest global leadership community.

In 2013, he co-founded Herotel, where he now serves as the CEO.

The interview

In this interview, Botha unpacks the history of Herotel and explains how it grew to become South Africa’s largest ISP.

He talks about Herotel’s “Everyone Connected” mission and how it has helped to connect townships and rural communities.

Botha then explains how Herotel’s vertically integrated model gives it an edge in reliability, pricing, and customer experience in South Africa.

He also goes into detail about Vumatel’s acquisition of Herotel, highlighting the benefits this brings to Herotel and Maziv Group.

Finally, Botha unpacks Herotel’s latest innovations and talks about the company’s future in South Africa.

Watch the full interview with Herotel CEO Van Zyl Botha below.