Cellphone bill optimisation company, Tariffic, closed its business as of 30 April. This is according to CEO Antony Seeff.
"It is with sadness that today we close the doors of Tariffic and I leave the office filled with emotion," he said in an e-mailed letter to colleagues and partners on 30 April.
Tariffic was founded in 2011 by Adam Pantanowitz, Howard Sackstein and Leor Atie, with the mission to help cellphone users understand, optimise and manage their cellphone spend and cellular usage. The company's main focus was on corporate clients but it also had consumer offerings.
"Four years ago I joined an exciting new start-up that was prepared to change the face of the cellular industry in South Africa. In that time, we've been through many highs and many lows. I feel happy to have had the opportunities we did. I feel devastated that we couldn't make it work," Seeff said.
Seeff told ITWeb that despite Tariffic's innovative product, unfortunately the firm realised the addressable market for the product was a lot smaller than it expected, as companies have largely moved away from offering corporate cellphone contracts, and many simply don't have enough contracts to justify a management service.
"Companies' cellphone management and savings weren't enough of a pain point for them to justify our service in many cases. Over the years, we tried so many pivots and tactics to find a solution that would stick with the market, but unfortunately the market kept pushing back.
"And so, after six years in business, our board of directors decided it was best to discontinue our services. It was difficult saying goodbye to our valued customers and heart-breaking to share the news with staff, but unfortunately it was the only solution that made commercial sense," Seeff told ITWeb.
Seeff says that as the company's prospects dwindled, so did its staff numbers.
"The staff that remained were either transferred to our sister company, Saicom Voice Services, or provided a soft-landing while they look for new positions," he says.
Tariffic is partly owned by Saicom Holdings. The Saicom group operates in business telecommunications largely focusing on telephony systems for corporate clients, VOIP operators and international telco carriers.
Seeff says Tariffic is in talks with some partners to sell its intellectual property and technology.
He did not explain what he will do next but said that "as this door closes, so others do open and I look forward to some new adventures ahead".
The company closes after in January creating a new division, KidTech, which offered "safe" cellphones for school kids by providing a cellphone contract and smartphone with pre-installed parental control apps and educational games. In January, KidTech also unveiled a Web site, called 'is my child being cyber bullied', that aimed to address the rising threat of cyber bullying among South African teens.
"The market responded very positively to KidTech; however, that did not result in as many sales as we would have liked. While Tariffic was still up and running, it made sense for us to continue exploring the KidTech opportunity and I'm sure we could have turned it into a profitable business, but with Tariffic closing down, we were forced to close KidTech as well," Seeff notes.
"All existing customers have been transferred to Telkom who will continue billing them for their contract and their phone every month. All the KidTech software will still work for those customers, for free, for the next year."