IT engineers from India brought in to help SA

Naspers CEO Koos Bekker said that they started to bring in engineers from India to supplement their own people in South Africa to execute the company’s e-commerce strategy.

Speaking to Business Day TV, Bekker said that Naspers has some “very good people” in South Africa, including high quality engineers.

However, Bekker said that South Africa’s poor education system does not produce the engineers needed to drive Internet developments in South Africa.

The need for e-commerce to be local means that the company is supplementing its local engineers with talent from India.

The need for local e-commerce operations does not mean technology cannot be shared across regions.

Bekker said that the technology can be shared. “So if we develop a great technology, for example, in India, we try to take it across to Poland to employ there,” said Bekker.

“So we share a lot, but at the most local level, the products and the people are local,” said Bekker.

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