Benji Coetzee

Founder & CEO

EmptyTrips, South Africa

Biography

After a decade in top-tier consulting and banking at firms like The Boston Consulting Group and HSBC, Benji decided to turn her attention towards creating commercially viable, yet environmentally impactful solution for enterprises that could enable economic growth, regional integration and overall development.

At age 31, Benji founded, self-funded and self-appointed herself as CEO of EmptyTrips. This bold move has paid off, the EmptyTrips platform powers Africa’s first enterprise Freight Open eXchange (FOX), using directional algorithmic matching and machine learning to reduce wasted empty space on commercial trucks, trains, planes and container vessels. The platform also boasts the industries’ first intuitive AI-driven “pay-as-you-move” freight cargo and marine instant insurance portal, namely SurefoxTM.
EmptyTrips was named Africa’s most promising Start-up of 2017 and boasts access to the largest fleet in Africa without owning a single asset, other than the IP.

Benji has been hosted on CNBC for entrepreneurship accolades, named Top 50 Women in Tech to watch by Entrepreneur Magazine (2018), awarded the Frost&Sullivan Innovation in On-demand logistics 2018, voted an Inspiring50 #BeBoldForChange (2018), seen as an “Insurtech Trail Blazer” by DC Velocity (2018), Listed in the Top 50 Women in Tech – Innov8tiv (2018), A top 5 Africa Global Impact Challenger – SingularityU (2017), the Tech Winner of SA Innovation Summit – 2017, Founder of Top 10 Most promising startups – BusinessTech (2017), Lioness of Africa Tech Disruptor (2017).

Benji was also the first South African to represent at the Startup World Cup ,held in San Francisco in May 2018, where EmptyTrips were placed in the top 5.

Benji is responsible for the company vision, strategy, innovative product roadmap and strategic relationships.
As full time entrepreneur, she bootstraps EmptyTrips by virtue of her Chief Strategist role at Seedpitch Consulting; a niche advisory aimed to help clients think progressively, and implement practically by addressing complex challenges to empower organizations and leaders with agile innovative strategies; strategies that focus on commercial evolution to build, or renew businesses for catapulted growth.