Most people now know iKhokha as one of the local fintech giants that were recently acquired by Nedbank for R1.65 billion. Today, the platform processes north of R20 billion in annual card payments and puts roughly R1 billion worth of working capital into the hands of small businesses every year.

While these numbers are massive, the actual story of how that business was built is far from the polished version you see in the headlines. It is a 14-year journey that began in a family garage in KZN and involved over a decade of fighting for every inch of growth in a heavily regulated and competitive market.

On 11 February, Mark Sham and Matt Putman will ignore the PR headlines to look at the actual mechanics of how this business survived and thrived.

To be clear, this isn’t a talk about fintech trends or motivational hacks. We are going to unpack how Matt and his two co-founders managed to build a business of this magnitude. We will explore how a guy with a media degree and a background running Durban nightclubs teamed up with a PhD engineer and an entrepreneurial high school mate to take on the financial establishment. We will talk about why playing high stakes online poker provided a better business education than any textbook and how surviving a year long battle with a chronic illness built the grit needed to keep a startup alive during the toughest cycles.

The conversation moves past the “success story” to focus on the unglamorous reality of building something meaningful over time. We will talk about the early days of creating hardware from scratch, the pressure of competing against better funded rivals, and the quiet discipline it takes to stay committed to a vision for over a decade. Above all, we will explore how years of operating under constraint shaped a culture of discipline that ultimately became a competitive advantage.

This event is for anyone interested in the true mechanics of growth. Whether you are a founder building a startup, a corporate leader managing a large team, or a professional looking to understand how value is actually created in a tough market, Matt’s journey offers a practical lens into what it takes to scale.