Errol Damelin
| Errol Damelin | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
23 August 1969 South Africa |
| Alma mater |
University of Cape Town Boston University |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur and early-stage technology investor |
| Organization | Wonga.com |
| Known for | Founding Wonga.com and being an early backer of PurpleBricks, TransferWise, Skurt, VivaReal, Thread and CityMapper. |
| Home town | London |
| Children | 3 |
Errol Damelin (born 23 August 1969) is a South African-born, Israeli/British entrepreneur and early-stage technology investor. He was the founder and CEO and later Chairman of Wonga, a British financial technology company that processed the worlds first straight through and fully automated consumer loans.
Errol Damelin grew up in a Jewish family in Klerksdorp, a small town in rural South Africa, where his father was a country doctor who later specialised as an anaesthesiologist. He went on to attend the University of Cape Town where he studied Business Science and Law and took up numerous leadership positions, including winning election to the UCT Students Representative Council in 1991. He was politically active and associated with the left leaning non-racial and anti-apartheid NUSAS students grouping during the years immediately preceding the end of apartheid in South Africa and was detained at least once while a student for protesting against the apartheid government policy of detention without trial.
Following his graduation in 1992 he emigrated to Israel and then completed a Masters of Science in Management from Boston University.
Damelin lives in London and has three children.
Damelin began his career working as a corporate finance banker at an Israeli investment bank that later merged into Israel Discount Bank. where he focussed on the financing of technology start-ups.
In 1997 Damelin left banking in search of making an impact as an entrepreneur and become part of the founding team at Barzelan, at the time, a high tech producer of speciality steel wire based in Beit Shemesh, Israel., which grew to export to over a dozen countries .
In 2000, Damelin founded Supply Chain Connect, an award winning cloud based supply chain software company in London, United Kingdom. The company pioneered what's become the ubiquitous sharing of supply chain collaboration data via the Internet. Supply Chain Connect listed customers such as Dow Chemicals, DuPont, Phelps Dodge, General Cable, Mondi Packaging and Corning. He sold the business in 2005 to ChemConnect for an undisclosed amount
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