Advisor
Wayne Pitout is one of the co-founders of iTouch who led the company to an IPO on the London Stock Exchange (ITU.L) in August 2000, raising £42.5m. iTouch was established in South Africa in 1996 and provides information and entertainment services to mobile users in over 20 countries. As CEO Wayne built the business into one of the top 3 leading mobile service providers in Europe before selling the business to NASDAQ listed, For-side.com, in May 2005 for $330m (£180m).
The company was subsequently delisted from the LSE in June 2005 and integrated For-side’s European businesses in the latter half of 2005 – Mobivillage, Telitas, SMS.at and Akumiitti. In February 2007 Wayne engineered a management buyout from For-side with the backing of Oak Investment Partners and Goldman Sachs for $100m. Today, iTouch has offices in 13 countries with 465 employees and generated in excess of $230m in revenues in 2006.
Prior to establishing iTouch, Wayne was Marketing Manager at Communication Frontiers who were responsible for the distribution of the French Minitel terminal in South Africa. Before this, he was a lecturer at the University of South Africa. Wayne holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Natal and Honours and Masters degrees from the University of South Africa.