the founder
Mitchan A. Adams
Mitchan “Mitch” Adams, founder and CEO of AIONS Creative Technology, was born in Riverlea, went to primary school in Coronationville, high school in Bosmont and was raised in Fleurhof.
He has first hand experience of the hardships of township living. The lack of opportunity and access to facilities as well as the non-existence of good role models, misguides youthful energy into negative activity, setting themselves back, those close to them and the community at large.
Adams nearly fell into the same trap if it had been not for the persistence of his father pushing for him to seek a better future. Reluctantly, Mitch pursued a career in IT, finding early entrance into the Fintech industry through a brokerage, then gaining experience in the payments industry.
This lead him to start a company in 2014, called Ozow Payments, with 2 of his friends. Adams got to use his creative ideas with his IT training to develop the biggest alternative payments platform in Southern Africa.
The company went from 3 founders, to a staff contingent of over 100 with an office in Johannesburg and Cape Town. The company valuation went from 0 ZAR to hundreds of millions in USD, within 7 years, with Tencent leading a 48m USD series B investment round in 2021, at which point Mitchan had decided to exit the day to day operations of the business.
Throughout the journey, Adams had won pitch dens and been accepted into various incubation programs. He gained experience in running a business, learning what to do as well as what not to do. He also served as a mentor in the incubation programs the company had graduated from and also learnt through that experience, what makes a good incubator and what makes a bad one.
He is regarded as a thought leader in the industry and has travelled the world speaking at international conferences. He regards one of the key reasons for his success to be exposure. What he regards as unfortunate, is that access to this sort of exposure only exists in affluent areas such as Sandton, Rosebank and the Cape Town CBD.
With his achievements and experience backing him, Mitchan has decided to dedicate his time to make the exposure he gained, more accessible to the communities he comes from, with improvements based on his learnings throughout his journey. His mission is to create sustainable jobs by making businesses more sustainable.
Learn more about Mitch’s journey here:
Ozow Documentary: The First Years