Business

Make $$$ fast!

You wouldn`t believe this, would you? But JSE-listed IT firm Paracon placed a bet on a tall tale of riches worth R6 billion in one year – a bet that cost it R2.5 million in the end.

02 September 2003

You wouldn`t believe this, would you? But JSE-listed IT firm Paracon placed a bet on a tall tale of riches worth R6 billion in one year – a bet that cost it R2.5 million in the end.

Gavin Dudley reported on ITWeb in June last year that Paracon sold the rights to a piece of software called Chatbox to a subsidiary of Virgin Islands-based multi-level marketing company Global Snowball. In return, it obtained a ten percent stake in Chatbox Limited, which would sell the software Amway-style.

Chatbox, grandly described as offering unified messaging, was rather less dramatically described by one of the contractors on the project as being “intended to be a fun virtual ‘toy` for use on the Internet”. It took four months to slap together, and combines mundane functions such as e-mail, instant messaging, SMS, web browser, image viewer and calendar into a single interface.

ITWeb Premium

Get 3 months of unlimited access
No credit card. No obligation.

Already a subscriber Log in