Pasi William Sachiti (born May 1984) is a Zimbabwean-born British entrepreneur and inventor. Sachiti is the founder and CEO of Academy of Robotics, an autonomous technology company which is primarily known for developing street-legal self-driving vehicles and solutions for road maintenance.

Career

Early ventures

William Sachiti appeared on the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

investment programme

Dragons' Den ''Dragons' Den'' is a reality television program format in which entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas to a panel of venture capitalists in the hope of securing investment finance from them. The program originated in 2001 in Japan, where it ...

in 2009 seeking investment for his company - Clever Bins. Clever Bins manufactured solar-powered digital advertising bins intended for public spaces. The Dragons did not invest in the business (with Dragon Peter Jones describing Sachiti's pitch as "infuriating and complete rubbish", and "the biggest load of bull I've ever heard in the Den"), but the business continued trading and secured a partnership with Keep Britain Tidy and trials with local councils in Manchester and London. In 2011 Sachiti (along with co-founder Ronald Ndoro) went on to develop a digital concierge service known as mycityvenue, which operated for a short time before being acquired by SecretEscapes in 2014. While studying at

Aberystwyth University Aberystwyth University () is a Public university, public Research university, research university in Aberystwyth, Wales. Aberystwyth was a founding member institution of the former federal University of Wales. The university has over 8,000 stude ...

, Sachiti and another student (Ariel Ladegaard) developed a prototype robot for navigating users around the main library at the university. Sachiti left the university before graduating, but still won an entrepreneurship prize along with Laadegard and another student - Aparajit Narayan. The trio were awarded £10,000 in prize money by the university’s entrepreneurship program for developing a theoretical solution to the last-mile delivery problem called Car-go (later renamed to Kar-go). Sachiti later founded a company to build on these early projects - Academy of Robotics. The Kar-go vehicle was developed further in collaboration with Pilgrim Motorsports, before finally being revealed in July 2019 at the

Goodwood Festival of Speed The Goodwood Festival of Speed is an annual motorsports festival featuring modern and historic motor racing vehicles taking part in a hillclimbing, hillclimb and other events, held in Goodwood House, West Sussex, in late June or early July. Th ...

Kar-go driving through RAF Brize Norton air base

Personal life

In early 2022, William Sachiti purchased a former RAF base (

RAF Neatishead Remote Radar Head Neatishead ( ), and commonly abbreviated RRH Neatishead, is an air defence radar site operated by the Royal Air Force (RAF). It is located approximately north-east of Norwich in the county of Norfolk, England. Originally kno ...

) and moved onto the site in Norfolk.

References

External links

Academy of Robotics website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sachiti, William People from Harare Zimbabwean businesspeople 1985 births Living people Alumni of Aberystwyth University