SA expat helps kick-start UK Premier League with Project Restart

At 43, this South African multi-millionaire who currently resides in the United Kingdom, has moved onto his fourth business venture in the last decade and a half. This time, as Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) CEO of global health diagnostics and solutions company Prenetics which is headquartered in Hong Kong and to which he sold his previous  company – DNAfit – for $10 million (R176 million) in 2018. 

Lasarow, who has also been appointed as South African Honorary Consul to the UK in 2016, is now “armed” for the fight against COVID-19 with testing systems which will assist in getting people back to work safely.

Prenetics is pioneering COVID-19 testing solutions in the UK (as well as Hong Kong and South Africa) and has just obtained a turnkey account to work alongside all the football clubs in the English Premier League on its “Project Restart” which would enable teams to restart training ahead of the remainder (it is hoped) of the country’s soccer season.

Spearheading innovative health solutions

Lasarow is no stranger to innovative health solutions which boast an international profile.

He founded Trimega, another UK medtech company which also sold for seven figures in 2012. Trimega garnered acclaim in the UK for aiding social services child support teams to establish when it is safe for vulnerable children to return to their homes. 

At the time, addiction issues were rife in many homes, and the need arose to medically validate whether parents who underwent rehabilitation to reunite with their families, were indeed “clean”. 

The company also operated South Africa’s first roadside drug testing research project known as DrugAlzyer.

Global hub for medical and technological innovation

The fast-talking entrepreneur moved to the UK in 2001 — travelling between South Africa and the UK on an ongoing basis before finally settling near his current London company with his wife and two children.

In doing so, he recognises the country’s status as global hub for medical and technological innovation. According to Lasarow, the UK is the only country that can compete with the United States in this field.   

Entrepreneur on the go from the get-go

As is the case with many entrepreneurs, Lasarow was not born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth. He grew up in a liberal household with strong family ties and strong focus on getting a good education. 

The young Lasarow’s academic achievements in a South African government school opened the door for him to attend a private school in the US for a while. 

By then he already displayed a keen interest in technology and – like one of his heroes, Bill Gates – one would find him at three in the morning glued to the screen of one of the school computers when it was free. 

And just like Gates – although Lasarow does not press the analogy – he bade formal education farewell at a young age. In fact, at the age of 16, he was convinced that neither school nor university at that time could add any value to the skills he earned in the early morning hours in the school computer room.

Of that time, Lasarow says: “I was very lucky to live in a home which valued formal education, but at the same time, my parents also had enough confidence in me to encourage me to take risks at key points of my life. 

“They thankfully recognised that my interests were very focused in an area which hadn’t been around for long enough to find professors who could actually teach me!”

Big breakthrough

On interview and skills alone, he got a job with Citibank working as part of its technology implementation team before setting off to begin his career as an entrepreneur. His various initial ventures in the UK and South Africa were then already focused on the medical technology field.

His big breakthrough came with his first scaled venture, Trimega, which sold for £8.3 million (about R178 million) to the respected private equity arm of the Close Brothers Group. 

For the first time in his life, Lasarow had capital on hand which he invested – and by his own admission, not fully successfully – in “safe bets” such as real estate. 

No safe bets: Re-invention and constant development

He says now: “I learnt fast that so many business opportunities which look safe, often aren’t – particularly in areas in which I was no expert even if advised as such. But I rather like a motto attributed to Nelson Mandela, rightly or not: ‘Sometimes the biggest risk is not to take one’.

“Certainly there are no safe bets even in technology, including for vast businesses, such as the so-called ‘Fangs’ (the five big tech companies which drive the stock market valuations in the US) which have to re-invent themselves or develop constantly in new areas. Entrepreneurship, continually, is at the heart of the sector, which is why it has always suited me so well.”

Avi also has mixed views on the US as a marketplace, having had a run-in with a regulator there in the past which appeared to be particularly focused on overseas businesses seeking market share in the “land of opportunity”.

Making headlines in testing times

For now, though, the future for Avi seems more set than in the past. He has led the capture of one of the most prestigious clients for COVID-19 private sector testing, which has become a lead story on the frontpages of British and international media publications. 

He has assembled world-class sub-contractors to streamline delivery, some of whom are providing the service to the UK National Health Service (NHS) and German Football League. He draws on the global footprint and resources of Prenetics, which has the backing of vast investors, such as e-commerce giant Alibaba and Ping An Insurance. 

Lasarow is at the helm of business development with some leading European companies as his Hong Kong parent works on accounts such as HSBC and Deliveroo, as well as a subsidiary which operates and employs teams in South Africa.

“The great thing about Prenetics is that the COVID-19 crisis has forced us to move fast and with great effect in a rapidly developing situation which is barely five months old. All of this  requires entrepreneurial, as well as ‘big company’ skills, and that is where I – as CEO for Europe, the Middle East and Africa – perhaps add most value as a business leader for now.”

There will doubtless be more chapters in the Avi Lasarow story – for a relatively young man who has managed to fit in so much from his great beginnings in South Africa, the country he still values hugely for work and life, and whose interests he represents in so many ways on an international platform.