William Sachiti

William Sachiti
Sachiti on London Live 2017
Born	(1985-05-01) 1 May 1985 Harare, Zimbabwe
Occupation	Entrepreneur, Founder, Inventor & Investor
Known for	Dragons' Den, Kar-go, mycityvenue,
Website	www.mycityvenueescapes.com

Pasihapaori Chidziva (Born May 1985) known as Pasi William Sachiti is a Zimbabwean^[1] born British serial entrepreneur and inventor.^[2] He is founder and CEO of the driverless car manufacturer, Kar-go, which is known for being the UK startup competing with multinational incumbents such as Google and Tesla, Inc..^[3][4][5]

Biography

Early life

Sachiti was born in Harare, Zimbabwe, where he grew up before moving to the UK at 16.^[6]

Business career

At 19, Sachiti started his first start-up 123-registration a domain registration business which was acquired year after its inception. Sachiti first reached the public eye after appearing on the BBC investment programme Dragons' Den, where he was seeking 65K for his company Clever Bins.^[7] Clever Bins was a solar powered digital advertising bin which was aimed as an advertising platform for cities. In what was described by the BBC as a slick pitch, Sachiti was unable to raise funding in the den. The company continued to trade for three years during which time it successfully licensed its technology to 6 countries and local governments before closing in 2013.^{[8][9][10][11][12]}

In 2013, Sachiti founded mycityvenue, a digital concierge and holiday company which grew to approximately 1.6 million users before it was acquired by UK holiday company Secret Escapes.^[13][14][15]

In 2015 Sachiti went to university at Aberystwyth University in Wales, where he studied artificial intelligence and robotics. While at university he was credited with inventing the worlds first artificially intelligent robot librarian, Hugh (robot).^[16] The robot was capable of holding a conversation or taking verbal commands and would be able to navigate users to any one of several million books in the library.^{[17][18][19][20][21]}

While at university, Sachiti and a team of scientists had been working on a way to autonomously deliver packages to try to solve the last mile delivery problem.^[22] In 2016, after receiving a £10 000 cheque from Aberystwyth University, Sachiti founded the Academy of Robotics, a vehicle manufacturer company to develop Kar-go. Kar-go is driverless car able to deliver multiple packages by using a combination of advanced robotics and driverless vehicle technology.^[23][24][25] The company later went to raise more money from venture capital at an initial £2M valuation. Kar-go has been nominated for several awards and has a production facility in Small Dole near Brighton in the UK.^{[26][27][28][29]}

Personal life

Sachiti was married in 2009 to his Italian wife. In 2013 he received a lot of press attention after his “jealous wife”^[30] hired a private investigator to track his movements.^[31] The investigator planted a tracking device underneath Sachiti’s £40K sports car. After being pulled over, the flashing device under his car was mistaken for a bomb and led to a bomb scare, shutting down a town and the military being called in. No evidence of a bomb or an affair was found but the story became viral and continued to circulate in tabloids around the globe.^{[32][33][34][35]}

References

External links

• Official website