Khonology takes on skills gap in financial services sector

Khonology (K) interview by Philippa Larkin (PL), the Content Editor of the business unit of Independent Newspapers, with Africa Nkosi and Mosa Nyamande at their Johannesburg, Rosebank, office. Soon Khonology, an African services company, is moving premises as it is growing in leaps and bounds.

PL: What was your idea of Khonology? How did it start?

K: We started in 2013 and it came at the back of a huge perception, particularly in the financial services space, as not having enough local skills to sort out all types of IT problems, particularly in banks and so forth. The gap was identified as seeing all the offshore companies providing solutions. We saw a big disparity.

Here is a huge industry, with a large footprint in the economy, yet the solutions are coming from offshore. It is not a problem, but we need to find a balance.

You can’t be 70 percent offshore and 30 percent local. It makes absolutely no sense. We dug deep into why that problem was there and we realised there was a shortage of skills. We need to be global players, using local solutions. And that is where Khonology said: “We need to prove there is local talent out there”.

PL: How many technikons or universities are providing you with people?

K: With universities we have 11. We don’t look at the elite universities like UCT, we look at the other universities like Venda, Limpopo; areas where people don’t tap into. There are a lot of people there who do computer science, astrophysics and other science and technology degrees. We also source people from Meetup groups. Anyone who shows an interest in technology. Let’s see what they can do.

PL: Do you then have to give these people financial literacy courses as the area you are in is even more specialised?

K: We take people through a financial literacy course. We have developed a sixweek course that takes them through the basics of finance, technology, economics to hard-core finance and, ultimately, they develop a technological product. For example, we develop an application for a bank that processes trades. Throughout the course that person would develop a product that will work on financial markets. This is very important as we take them through that.

For example, one of our top guys studied physics, then ultimately astrophysics. He went overseas. The world was pretty much his oyster. He came back to South Africa and couldn’t get a job for about six or seven months as there is not much of a market for astrophysicians. Fortunately, one of his mates put him in touch with us. We did an assessment.

He was brilliant. But he was worried. He said, guys, I’m going into financial technology. I know nothing. We said: “My man, if you can model stars, modelling finance is pretty much A,B, C for you.” He has flourished. He is now working in the risk space, doing exceptional things there.

PL: But I just want to understand more. You cherry-pick people. But do they end up working for you or do they go elsewhere?

K: You are talking about work flow. The idea is to get them out of varsity. They are employed by Khronology and hired as consultants.

PL: Do Khronology consultants out in the field have a base they can draw from with your combined knowledge?

K: Yes, we make sure everyone in the organisation spends time with the new recruits and once a month we do a team networking session or drinks session where we invite everyone.

We share knowledge and brainstorm and work on common knowledge. We need to drive a community and build a market. The market is too small.

By doing this you are building a market where it eventually becomes an ecosystem that contributes to society, South Africa’s economy.

All these guys will one day become the captains of their industries. And that is what we want. We need more innovation in this sector.

More disruptive stuff. More guys who say let’s build an African solution by Africans. It is the type of thinking we are looking to start driving. If you don’t start it, you are not going to get it.

PL: Are there other players in this financial niche?

K: Yes, the difference is our approach. There about 20 to 40 players in the market. We differ from being locally based.

We want to grow our critical mass of employing 1 000 people in South Africa. We want to be a game-changer in the economy, to create our own beast that can feed itself. We need volume gain. We need to get that going.

Currently we are sitting at 103. We have trained 150. Of that, 129 have been our employees.