[Image: YouTube]
Zak Calisto, the chief executive and founder of Karooooo (yes, with four o’s), has officially crossed over into the billionaire’s playground, with his stake in the group now tipping the scales at a cool $1.07 billion. Not bad for a guy who ditched actuarial science to chase car thieves.
Calisto owns a straight-up dominant 65% of Karooooo’s shares outright, plus another 10% under a side agreement that gives him extra voting muscle. Yep, he’s firmly in the driver’s seat.
As of Thursday (22 May), the company was strutting around with a $1.65 billion market cap, which puts Calisto’s direct cut north of $1 billion, per BusinessTech. That lands him as the eighth member of South Africa’s ultra-exclusive billionaire club. Not bad company, considering it includes the likes of Rupert, Motsepe, and Bekker.
Karooooo – formerly known as Cartrack before it rebranded with a keyboard-stumble of a name – is in the business of fleet management, stolen vehicle recovery, and insurance telematics. What started in 2001 as a scrappy local tracker has since morphed into a globe-spanning tech beast. The company listed on the JSE in 2014 and never looked back.
From South Africa to Singapore, Karooooo’s journey has been anything but linear. The firm now runs operations in 24 countries across Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas. They moved HQ to Singapore in 2020, because apparently, world domination requires a new zip code.
At the core of it all is Calisto, who personally holds 20,028,811 shares – good for a 64.81% slice, valued at $1.07 billion. That’s not just control; it’s an iron grip.
So, how did a university dropout end up here? Calisto bailed on actuarial science at Wits to go into military service, then flirted briefly with the banking world. But it was South Africa’s epidemic of car theft that lit his entrepreneurial fuse. His tech helped bring down insurance premiums and opened doors across sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.
And the growth train hasn’t slowed. Karooooo just posted a 25% jump in earnings per share for the year through February 2025, with double-digit subscription revenue. Even though about 75% of its 2.3 million users are still in South Africa, Asia is the next big frontier.
“There’s significant potential for even faster growth,” Calisto said in an interview, deadpan but bullish.
He’s all in on organic growth, but acquisitions? “Not off the table,” he added. Translation: if the right deal comes along, he’s buying.
The name “Karooooo” is a nod to the semi-desert Karoo region, Calisto’s personal favourite. The extra o’s? That’s what happens when you don’t feel like paying top dollar for a domain name.
Now 58, Calisto’s journey spans continents. Born in Portugal, raised in Mozambique, he landed in South Africa as a political refugee after Mozambique’s colonial regime collapsed. He worked at Standard Bank and moonlighted as a distributor for Netstar, now a rival. He then launched Cartrack with a mere R100 and some clever leverage of wireless carrier incentives from MTN and Vodacom.
And now? He’s sitting at the big table, alongside SA’s billionaire elite: Johann Rupert, Nicky Oppenheimer, Koos Bekker, Patrice Motsepe, Michiel le Roux, Christo Wiese, and Jannie Mouton.
Not bad for a guy who started with a hundred rand and a hunch.
The other South African billionaires include:
- Johann Rupert – $14.0 billion
- Nicky Oppenheimer – $10.4 billion
- Koos Bekker – $3.4 billion
- Patrice Motsepe – $3.0 billion
- Michiel Le Roux – $2.2 billion
- Christo Wiese – $1.5 billion
- Jannie Mouton – $1.5 billion
- Zak Calisto – $1.0 billion
[Source: BusinessTech]
