Zimbabwe’s William Sachiti Is Changing The World One Tech Innovation At A Time | How Africa News
William Sachiti is the founder of Academy of Robotics and a Zimbabwean serial entrepreneur residing in the United Kingdom. When he was studying at Aberystwyth University in Wales, he struggled to find the correct locations for the books he needed in a library.
According to Forbes Africa, this inspired him to create the first robot library, where users could walk up to a robot and ask it for the exact location of a book, and it would direct them. According to its website, he then founded the Academy of Robotics, a technology institute that specializes in developing technology to perform or simplify complex tasks.
Sachiti’s flagship product, the Kar-go Delivery Bot, was one of the first cars developed for self-driving delivery to be approved on European roads in 2020. “The company’s services now include self-driving deliveries, indoor logistics robots, and detection and analysis of road defects,” Sachiti, 35, told Forbes Africa.
He spent time growing up in both Zimbabwe and the United Kingdom. His grandparents were cattle herders and farmers in a small village in Zimbabwe. Despite his privileged upbringing, he credits his time spent with his grandparents in the village with grounding him.
Sachiti moved to England in 2000 and did odd jobs such as selling double-glazed windows and doors. This led to a position as a stockbroker. His entrepreneurial journey then began. When he was 19, he started his first business. He founded 123 Registration and sold hundreds of websites and domain names. Despite the fact that the startup was doing well, he sold it to an investor.
According to iharare.com, his second venture was Clever Bins, a solar-powered digital advertising container that served as a city advertising platform. Clever Bins was taken to the BBC Dragons’ Den by him. The Dragons dismissed his creation as the worst idea they had ever heard. However, he went on to license his idea in over 11 nations before acquiring the main license for it.
His second venture was MyCityVenue, a things-to-do firm. It had over 1.6 million users within three years and was ultimately acquired by a firm named Secret Escapes, while the data was also obtained by a large cab company.
According to Forbes, Sachiti made millions of pounds by selling several businesses and investing the proceeds in robots. He made his first attempt at creating robots while studying artificial intelligence and robotics at Aberystwyth University in Wales.