CG Tech is an owner-managed holding company that shares and supports strategic insights and innovative execution processes with its business partners. It exists to serve, solve, and uplift and aims to build businesses that inspire those they serve. CG Tech’s investments include Prommac, New Age Engineering, Kumunyack, Al Laith Group, Serious International, The Virtulab, and Virtuworx
Today, the CG Tech group of companies employs more than 4,500 people in six operating companies across the EMEA Super Region through eight companies.
A Group of Companies
CG Tech was founded to construct a holding company that would include all of its underlying businesses and assets and provide the individual businesses with a sense of coherence and a unified group brand.
Prommac was established in 2005 and provides mechanical, electrical, instrumentation, maintenance, shutdown, and project management services to a variety of industry segments across South Africa.
Al Laith was established in the Middle East in 1995 and provides design and engineering, as well as project management and execution of technical temporary infrastructure projects around the Middle East. It has been recognized as the leading one-stop provider of rental solutions in the Middle East.
New Age Engineering Solutions was established in 2002 and has become recognized as one of the top welding engineering services in South Africa.
Kumunyack was established in 2014 and provides electrical and instrumentation services, including low- and medium-voltage solutions.
Serious International was established in 2020 and has become recognized as a leading provider of temporary and permanent sound stages for the film production industry across the United Kingdom.
The Virtulab was established in 2016 and provides consultancy, software, and APP development solutions for the industrial and events sectors globally.
Virtuworx was established in 2020 to participate in the metaverse race and is a fully-fledged virtual campus that can be used for conferences, education events, and remote office requirements.
Meet the Visionary
Jason English is a business owner, author, speaker, co-founder of CG Tech, and chief eco-system officer. Jason made the decision to leave the corporate world in 2012 and embark on a quest to create the company he had always imagined; one that would change the lives of everyone involved, one that would serve as a model for others. He established himself as being supported by a group of private investors in 2014. As a result, the process of forming an international group got underway.
In 2015, the group hired a COO and soon after bought 50% of a company in Dubai aimed at expanding its horizons into the Middle East oil and gas space. Jason shares, “In 2016, we started a drone company based out of London, acquired an electrical company in South Africa, and later in the same year, acquired Al Laith. In 2018, we did a merger with New Age Engineering in South Africa and established CG Tech as a holding group company.” In 2018, the group set out to formalize its group of companies, and Jason became the chief ecosystem officer at CG Tech, and the company repurposed its drone business into a SAAS business called The Virtulab.
In January 2020, the CEO of Al Laith retired, and Jason came to Dubai to look at the business to determine what kind of CEO the company required to take over. He shares, “Covid broke 4 weeks later, and so myself and my family just never went home, and I found myself taking on the role of CEO at Al Laith alongside my role at CG Tech.” During 2020, the group also established Serious International to support the film production industry on the back of a shortage of media content online.
Leading with Offering Exceptional Services
The foundation of CG Tech’s strategy is to invest in traditional businesses that are by their very nature dull and uninspiring, while also assisting the executive teams by implementing strategic oversight and cutting-edge solutions across the portfolio firms. The team at CG Tech has its own software development division, which is staffed by highly qualified software engineers and developers that create software solutions that improve the performance of the underlying portfolio companies.
On a fundamental level, CG Tech companies that work in the oil and gas and industrial infrastructure sectors have encouraged other South African companies to embrace digital transformation and innovation. Leading from the front, its businesses have undergone transformations that have made them industry leaders in technology that promotes worker safety and efficiency for vast populations of people.
In order to meet a pressing need for stages in the film business, CG Tech was able to quickly create and build sound stages by utilizing cutting-edge virtual models and planning tools.
Virtuworx, CG Tech’s metaverse product, has developed into a top-notch, cutting-edge campus that has played host to notable events like the inauguration of the president of South Africa, TedX Lytelton talks, the Green Energy conference, and recruitment fairs featuring people like Vusi Thembekwayo, to name a few.
The company states, “In our construction business in the Middle East, our early adoption of IoT systems has enabled us to hold a sizable fleet of SMART machinery which gives great data analytics and reports for our customers and enables our business to understand clients’ utilisation in a far more effective way.β
The CG Tech team is happy to be at the forefront of all these developments and adoptions, which have encouraged many others to enter the market or embrace comparable technologies in order to stay up with transformation. Jason was honored to receive the Ventures Connect award for technology leader of the year in 2021, which was given in appreciation of the company’s efforts to advance innovation and its achievements in this field.
Creating an Environment of Innovation and Values
Over the course of a two-decade career at various levels of the corporate ladder, Jason has developed his forward-thinking management philosophy and style. Building engaging cultures and comprehending how a leader may successfully transmit what he regards as his “Oros” – his ideas, knowledge, and beliefs – to every member of a company have been two of his main focus areas. He continues by saying that the Oros Effect enables leaders to decentralize decision-making throughout their teams so that the decisions made by the teams resemble those that Jason would make whether or not he was present. He says, “Leaders that can successfully transfer their Oros onto their teams can expect strong company culture, increased productivity, and natural integrity to quickly follow.”
Regarding innovation, Jason tries to host Idea Jam sessions at least twice a year, when each staff member takes part in small group conversations about particular subjects. To get the best variety of ideas flowing, the team uses sticky notes, whiteboards, and a mix of teams, departments, and seniority levels.
CG Tech’s team celebrates the experimentation process rather than the failure as part of another effort that Jason is spearheading. Each department offers one failed experiment that they have undertaken. Because they won’t be penalized if their new ideas fail, this encourages the teams to experiment.
In addition, many of CG Tech’s meetings include an agenda item for innovation and fresh ideas to promote reflection and discussion on the subject. The smartest, brightest ideas often come from the most simple, unexpected groups that have to face the challenges on the ground.
CG Tech’s core values are:
Safety: Jason focuses on his own safety as well as the safety of his colleagues and all those who make use of the company’s services and equipment.
People First: Jason seeks to improve the lives of his colleagues, clients, and all who associate with the company’s services.
Agile: Jason responds quickly and clearly to changing client needs and disruptive innovations
Responsible: Jason is responsible for his actions and honors his commitment to conduct himself with an ownership mindset.
Again core values are something that many companies write up on a wall and document in some way, but Jason often challenges the company’s leaders as to what they are. If the leadership doesn’t remember them, then rest assured that the majority of employees won’t.
Growing Continually for Betterment
Jason is a YPO member, and being surrounded by the largest CEO community on earth is a great way to grow both as a tech leader and as a leader in general. He takes advantage of the strength of his networks to stay abreast of global issues and find out what’s happening. Jason is a part of A360, a group led by Peter Diamandis that focuses on the world’s most cutting-edge and futuristic technological advancements. When it comes to growing as a tech leader, the A360 community is yet another essential resource. Additionally, he serves on a number of boards and speaks at conferences where he can hear and learn about the trends that are emerging in many industries.
Ahead in the Competition
The fact that CG Tech operates in a variety of industries gives it the opportunity to test the technology it produces and determine the optimal use cases for value development. The business is continually seeking new goods and services that boost productivity among vast workforces, make the workplace a safer place to work, and, most crucially, guarantee that the technology will benefit its customers rather than merely serve as a “fudge” sales pitch for innovation.
CG Tech can do things the right way and establish a legitimate tech business without moving the goalposts because it can rely on its own corporate venture investment rather than capital markets or venture funds. This generally means more security for the core teams and therefore helps the company in the competitive landscape.
CG Tech has also launched its “CG Innovation Fund,” which is a complicated but unique incentive scheme for its executive employees around the world. “Sharing the success and pain of a collective group can be powerful, and while we are at an early stage of the process, this is a game changer in our business world,” says Jason.
The Role of the Chief Ecosystem Officer and its Challenges
In the past, the success of an organization’s numbers was used to judge a CEO’s performance, rather than all the factors that contributed to that achievement. Focusing on the factors that result in favorable outcomes for employees, clients, communities, and suppliers is crucial when using an ecosystem approach. At the CG Tech level, the position is merely concerned with standardizing how the organization approaches and manages its ecosystem across all of its group firms. Aligning minds is important for everything from engagements, procedures, and systems to annual strategies. As a result, the team can easily and quietly relocate resources from one area of the group to another.
Mondays were often Jason’s day to be at the Dubai office, catch up on paperwork, and interact with the workers. Tuesdays are reserved for his management team, and he spends the entire day in one-on-one meetings with each member to assist them in resolving departmental problems or simply to exchange notes about family, personal, and professional matters. Visits to clients or projects typically take place on Wednesday, and Jason works from home on Thursday to catch up with the rest of the team. Saturday and Sunday are intended for family leisure, while Friday is spent wrapping off the week back in the Dubai office. He shares, “Of course, this all sounds very structured, but the reality is every alternate week I am traveling, and this messes up my weeks and weekends and often ends up with everything above falling into chaos.β
Vision for the Future
Some of CG Tech’s key focus areas as it moves out of 2022 include:
Funding Growth – As the company’s businesses grow, global uncertainty, growing pains, cash flow/working capital, funding/capital expenditure, management depth, system capacity, team culture & quality, and safety all become critical to its success. Jason says, “If we cannot fund growth, then of course we either slow down or run out of money. Neither being a great outcome.”
Maintaining Culture – Growth is good, but not at the expense of purpose and values, and so managing the way CG Tech recruits, onboards, trains, and maintains its people is fundamental to long-term survival. Jason believes that maintaining culture when the world is in a state of chaos is always difficult and therefore remains a core focus for the company.
Managing Inflation Risk – With the world’s inflation rising, staying on top of and being proactive when it comes to managing costs, maintaining margins, signing long-term contracts, client creditworthiness and currency fluctuations are important elements for CG Tech to remain focused on.
Quote: βIn our construction business in the Middle East, our early adoption of IoT systems has enabled us to hold a sizable fleet of SMART machinery which gives great data analytics and reports for our customers and enables our business to understand clients’ utilisation in a far more effective way.”
Written by Steve Sanchez.
