Local Duo Revolutionises First Responder Systems

What started as volunteer work has since made RapidDeploy a leader in the emergency response systems industry.

- Glenneis Kriel

After a ten-year stint as chief technology officer of the gaming business in London, Brett Meyerowitz made his way back to South Africa and started working for a banking company. With more time on his hands, he decided to volunteer as an ambulance assistant, which exposed him to the deep inefficiencies of the emergency response systems used in SA.

“The systems were dated, expensive to maintain, unfriendly and extremely inefficient, resulting, among others, in emergency response teams being reliant on map books when they were in unfamiliar territory. This is situations where timing often meant the difference between life and death,” Meyerowitz says.

In response he started developing a mobile platform to help him and fellow volunteers overcome this challenge. Features were expanded as more companies became aware of the system and requested additional features, such as global positioning and real-time navigation.

Meyerowitz only registered the company in 2014, after TomTom asked him for his business banking details to pay over commission for referring clients to them, who were looking for navigational technology to link with his system.

“At that stage,I still referred to the system as Dispatcher, but settled on the name RapidDeploy as it was more descriptive of what I wanted to achieve,” he says.

Serendipity

The solution became more business-driven in 2016, after Meyerowitz met Steven Raucher at a braai hosted by a mutual friend. Raucher had just returned after spending 20 years in IT programming for banks in London and New York. Despite their IT backgrounds, the two primarily connected because of their passion for volunteer work.