Mark Allan Smith (BA LLB) : C.E.O.

Mark completed his articles and practised as an attorney for a few months before joining Shield Trading Corporation Ltd ("Shield") as legal advisor.

In 1987 Shield was listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and Mark played a pivotal role in the listing of the company. Two years later he was appointed as the legal director for Shield as well as joint managing director of Success Wholesale Holdings (Pty) Ltd, a subsidiary of Shield.

Mark was also the managing director of Infophone (Pty) Limited which operated telephony services in the premium rate service industry where he gained experience in the audiotex telephony platform. In 1991 Mark was appointed joint managing director of Shield. In 1992 Massmart Holdings (Pty) Ltd, a subsidiary of Wooltru Limited, acquired 66% of Shield and Mark was appointed the managing director of Shield.

In May 1995, Mark was also appointed a director of Massmart Holdings (Pty) Ltd, the holding company of Shield, Makro and Dion. As managing director of Shield, Mark was responsible for 450 franchised outlets and responsible for sales of R1.3 Billion. The total market share of Shield's outlets totalled (collectively) approximately R6 Billion. In February 1997 Mark phased out of Shield to start FoneWorx.



Ronald Graver : Director

Ronald was the music procurement and marketing manager for 320 CNA retail stores from 1980 until 1990. He then held the position of marketing director of RPM, a division of CNA Gallo from 1989 to 1990. In 1990 he was appointed the managing director of Parrot Publishing (Pty) Ltd, a joint venture between Nasionale Pers Limited and the Argus Group. Ronald then left Parrot to form his own company, International Appeal (Pty) Ltd, which operated within the premium rate industry. In 1994 Ronald joined Shield as marketing manager and in 1997 he resigned from Shield to start FoneWorx.



Gaurang Mooney : BA Economics & Finance (Non-executive Director)

Gaurang studied at the University of Texas and obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and Finance. Gaurang's background is in finance and he is an executive director of Overseas Development Enterprises (Pty) Ltd. This company has significant interests in owning and operating large wholesale and retail trading outlets in the food, hardware and flooring sector in Southern Africa. In addition to this, a main focus of the company is property development both in Southern Africa and Australia. Gaurang has built up tremendous practical experience in all of the businesses that the company has interests in. He has been associated with the founder members of the Company since it commenced its current operations.



Ashvin Govan Mancha : Chairman (Non-executive)

Ashvin obtained a B. Proc from the University of Witwatersrand in 1981, and thereafter a Diploma in Financial Management. He completed articles at Soller, Winer and Partners, and was admitted as an Attorney in 1982. His primary responsibilities and experience were in the banking sector. In 1985 he entered the family business which ran property and retail businesses which gave him direct exposure to the stockbroking community in South Africa. He then joined Ed, Hern Rudolph Inc. as a stockbroker on completion of his stockbroking exams and was the first qualified black practicing stockbroker during the apartheid era of South Africa. He was invited to join the board of directors, and remained a director after the firm was sold to BOE Natwest in 1995. During the period up to his departure in December 1999, he built up one of the largest private client stockbroking businesses in South Africa. In June 2000 he started the stockbroking firm of Afrifocus Securities with a staff of 3 which has grown to a staff of 45 based at 3 offices being Sandton, CapeTown and Centurion. Afrifocus, of which he is Chairman, is now the largest independent and non aligned stockbroker in South Africa.



Robert Russell : Director

Robert has a vast background in telephony services and was previously employed by Control Instruments (Pty) Ltd. He has experience in voice recognition (biometric) services and has been involved in value added voice services network (premium rate service). Robert has also had experience in design implementation of calling party pays voice network for Super Call Cellular, implementation of international gateway access for Cable and Wireless value added voice services and the upgrading of functionality of virtual reality computer based training simulators for Altech Defence Systems (Pty) Ltd.



Graham Groenewaldt : Director

Graham began his career at Telkom in the technical department and became a department supervisor at the age of 21 after which he was promoted to Zone Manager. Following on from Telkom, Graham co-founded Qualicom, specialising in servicing and maintenance of PABX and telecommunications equipment.

Teleboss later bought Qualicom and Graham stayed on as Operations Director. In 1992 he left Teleboss to become an independent consultant. In 1995 Graham returned to Teleboss as Managing Director of the Johannesburg region. After managing Teleboss for four years he took up the position as CEO of TeleMessage in October of 1999 and in December was appointed to the board of directors as Managing Director. Telemessage was merged with a subsidiary of Interconnective Solutions Ltd, now FoneWorx Holdings Ltd, in 2003.



Dean Zwarts : Director

Dean studied networking and general IT and completed his MCSE /A+ /N+ at CTI College. He started his career at Datapro Business Online as a PC technician.

Dean then started a reseller program in the textile industry to gain additional business experience. Dean then started a small business with two of his IT colleagues in providing outsourced developments.

Dean joined FoneWorx in May 2000 as a technical and admin manager. Dean has developed exceptionally sound technical and administration skills and was responsible for many end-to-end developments over the last seven years. In June 2007 Dean was appointed as the IT Director of FoneWorx.