Building Tech For Emerging Markets: Interview With Founder Of Flood, André de Wet

Building Tech For Emerging Markets: Interview With Founder Of Flood, André de Wet. For more than two decades, André de Wet has been building at the sharp edge of technology and commerce in emerging markets, where ambition often collides with infrastructure gaps, informal economies, and hard economic realities. As the founder of Flood and a former leader behind platforms like PriceCheck and iflix, de Wet brings a rare, deeply practical perspective shaped as much by failure as by scale. In this interview, he reflects on what it really takes to build sustainable businesses in Africa and similar markets, why execution consistently outperforms flashy innovation, and how bridging the offline and digital worlds unlocks real growth. From losing everything early in his career to helping process hundreds of millions in transactions behind the scenes, his insights offer founders a grounded, experience-driven guide to building companies that last where conditions are toughest and opportunities are greatest. Check it out below!

Founders in Focus presents a more grounded view of entrepreneurship. Why is this perspective important for founders building in emerging markets today?

In emerging markets, the glamour of Silicon Valley-style tech often overshadows the gritty realities on the ground, like fragmented infrastructure, informal economies, and the sheer dominance of offline retail. My perspective, drawn from two decades of building in Africa and beyond, emphasises the “real economics” of these markets: understanding that 95% of transactions still happen offline, and that true scale comes from bridging digital tools with physical realities. For founders today, this is crucial because chasing shiny consumer apps without grasping local constraints leads to burnout and failure. Instead, focus on sustainable models that leverage existing ecosystems, like banks and telcos, to create value. In a world where capital is tighter and competition fiercer, this grounded approach helps avoid the trap of over-innovating without execution, ensuring your tech actually solves problems at scale and generates real revenue.

As the only African founder featured in the book, what message do you hope global readers take away about innovation on the continent?

Africa isn’t just a market – it’s a hotbed of resilient, resourceful innovation born from necessity. As the sole African voice in the book, I want readers to see that the continent’s entrepreneurs are tackling some of the world’s most complex challenges, from digitising informal trade to building inclusive financial systems, often with far fewer resources than their global counterparts. The message is clear: Africa’s innovation isn’t about replicating Western models; it’s about creating hybrid solutions that blend tech with local realities, like enabling small merchants in sprawling townships. Global readers should walk away inspired to invest in and collaborate with African founders, recognising that the next wave of trillion-dollar opportunities, like clicks-to-mortar commerce, will emerge from here, driven by entrepreneurs who turn constraints into competitive edges.

Your chapter begins with failure rather than success. How did losing everything early in your career reshape your approach to risk and leadership?

Starting my chapter with failure was deliberate, because that’s where the real lessons lie. After dropping out of medical school to launch my first business, I built and sold a company by age 27, only to lose it all a year later due to inexperience, silly decisions (youth), and poor risk management. That rock-bottom moment taught me that failure isn’t the end; it’s a masterclass in resilience. It reshaped my risk approach by making me more calculated: I now stress-test ideas against worst-case scenarios, diversify revenue streams, and prioritise cash flow over hype. On leadership, it humbled me, I learned to build teams that thrive in uncertainty, fostering a culture of transparency and adaptability. Today, at Flood, this means empowering my team to experiment but always with a safety net, turning potential setbacks into stepping stones. Entrepreneurs, remember: success is built on the scars of failure.

Having worked on platforms like PriceCheck and iflix, what recurring challenges in emerging markets ultimately led to the creation of Flood?

At PriceCheck, we built Africa’s leading price comparison platform, hitting millions of users, but we constantly battled the offline-online divide – consumers loved discovering deals digitally, yet fulfilment relied on fragmented physical retail. With iflix, scaling video streaming across Africa exposed similar hurdles: low digital literacy, unreliable infrastructure, and the need for hyper-local content to compete with informal markets and DVD piracy. These experiences revealed recurring pain points in emerging markets, massive offline dominance (95% of retail), poor merchant visibility online, and the high cost of customer acquisition for new apps. Flood was born from this: a platform that digitises offline commerce by connecting local merchants to large audiences through existing super-apps. It addresses those challenges head-on, turning barriers like distribution gaps into opportunities for seamless, geo-targeted transactions.

Flood chose to enable banks and telcos instead of building another consumer super-app. What strategic thinking informed this decision?

Building a consumer super-app from scratch in emerging markets is a capital-intensive grind, user acquisition costs skyrocket, and retention is brutal amid app fatigue. We chose to enable banks and telcos because they already own the distribution: massive user bases, trust, and infrastructure. Our strategic thinking? Play to strengths – Flood acts as the “plumbing” behind the scenes, integrating discovery, payments, and rewards into their ecosystems, allowing them to launch commerce features quickly without reinventing the wheel. This B2B2C model reduces our go-to-market risks, leverages partners’ scale for faster adoption, and creates win-wins: they gain new revenue streams, we tap into billions in untapped offline spend. In emerging markets, where ecosystems are king, this approach ensures sustainability over flashy disruption.

With nearly 95% of retail still happening offline in many markets, what are the biggest barriers preventing small merchants from digitising?

The offline dominance isn’t just habit—it’s structural. Small merchants, like spaza shops or street vendors, face barriers like limited tech access (smartphones and data are luxuries), low digital literacy (many lack training on apps or online inventory), high costs (fees for POS systems or platforms eat margins), and trust issues (fear of scams or data privacy). Infrastructure gaps, unreliable power, poor internet, compound this, as does regulatory fragmentation across borders. At Flood, we’ve seen that even motivated merchants struggle with onboarding complexity. The key? Simplify: offer low-cost, mobile-first tools with offline capabilities, partner with trusted locals for training, and focus on immediate ROI, like instant customer leads. Founders, don’t underestimate these hurdles; solving them unlocks massive scale.

The rapid onboarding of 8,000 merchants during the 2020 lockdowns was a defining moment. What lessons did that period teach you about execution at scale?

The 2020 lockdowns were a pressure cooker that accelerated Flood’s growth, onboarding 8,000 merchants in weeks as offline retail ground to a halt. Key lessons? First, agility trumps perfection, we pivoted to remote, no-touch onboarding via SMS and simple apps, cutting bureaucracy. Second, partnerships are lifelines: collaborating with telcos for data access and banks for payments enabled seamless scaling without building everything ourselves. Third, empathy drives adoption, merchants were desperate, so we focused on quick wins like geo-targeted offers to boost their visibility overnight. Finally, tech resilience matters: our cloud-based system handled surges without crashing. For entrepreneurs, this underscores that crises reveal execution gaps – build modular systems, foster cross-functional teams, and always prioritise user pain points for rapid, sustainable growth.

Flood has processed over $400 million in GMV across multiple countries. How do you measure success when operating largely behind the scenes?

Hitting $400 million in GMV is gratifying, but as a behind-the-scenes enabler, success isn’t just vanity metrics—it’s about ecosystem impact. We measure it through partner ROI: how much incremental revenue do banks and telcos generate via our integrations? Merchant metrics like active users, transaction growth, and retention tell us if we’re truly digitising offline retail. Broader indicators include market penetration, nearly a third of some countries’ populations use Flood-powered features, and cross-border scalability, from South Africa to Ghana and the Maldives. Qualitatively, success is in stories: small merchants doubling sales or communities accessing local goods digitally. In emerging markets, where visibility is low, we track long-term value creation over short-term hype, ensuring our “invisible” role drives tangible, multiplier effects.

Distribution and ecosystem partnerships seem central to your philosophy. Why do you believe execution often matters more than innovation in emerging markets?

Innovation gets the headlines, but in emerging markets, execution is the real differentiator, ideas are abundant, but turning them into reality amid infrastructure gaps, regulatory hurdles, and cultural nuances is brutal. Distribution is everything: without it, even the best tech gathers dust. Partnerships with ecosystems like banks and telcos amplify reach, reduce costs, and build trust faster than going solo. My philosophy? Focus 20% on innovating, 80% on executing, nail operations, adapt to local contexts, and iterate relentlessly. In places like Africa, where resources are scarce, poor execution kills more startups than lack of ideas. Founders who master this, through disciplined teams, data-driven decisions, and resilient supply chains, outlast the innovators who flame out.

What advice would you give to African founders building solutions for informal or underserved economies who want to scale sustainably?

To African founders targeting informal or underserved economies: Start with deep empathy, live the problems you’re solving, like offline retail’s invisibility, to build relevant solutions. Prioritise partnerships over isolation; align with banks, telcos, or governments for distribution and credibility. Focus on execution: bootstrap where possible, stress-test for constraints like power outages, and measure progress in real impact, not just downloads. Build resilience, failure will come, so diversify risks and foster adaptable teams. Seek patient capital that understands Africa’s timelines, and think cross-border early for scale. Finally, remember sustainability means profitability, not endless funding rounds, create models that generate cash flow from day one. Africa’s opportunities are immense; execute with grit, and you’ll not just survive, but redefine global innovation.