The Backsaver team.
Backsaver is led by Michris Janse van Rensburg and Ithateng Mokgoro.
Michris heads the engineering and manufacturing operations from the Backsaver factory at Farm Mooi Uitsig in Bultfontein, in the Free State.
Ithateng works out of Sandton in Gauteng, the commercial heart of the continent. He leads Backsaver’s rainmaking and storytelling efforts, managing sales and marketing the brand.
Michris Janse van Rensburg
Founder, Chief Inventor
Michris is a farmer, inventor, and practical problem solver. As a commercial maize farmer based in Bultfontein in the Free State, he was hit by a significant cutworm outbreak in 2009, which required him to replant many seeds by hand. With no planter on the market able to ease the painstaking work that he needed to put in, he set out to invent one. He founded Backsaver in 2010 after he entered his invention in a farming innovations competition and won. Since then, Michris has been passionate about making life easier for farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa, where 70% of the land is cultivated by hand through backbreaking work.
Ithateng Mokgoro
Director, Rainmaker
Ithateng is a versatile, multi-disciplinary creative thinker. He has a long and varied background in brand communications, where he has done work for Coca-Cola, Vodacom, Eskom, Nando's, and TED Conferences, amongst others. He is co-curator and speaker coach of various TEDx events since 2010, including TEDxJohannesburg. He is a curious and open-minded lifelong learner, driven by a healthy appetite for practical knowledge that solves today's problems and shapes the future. The world, seen through his eyes, is an exhilarating design. And, there is no problem in it that a good dose of design thinking cannot solve.