Stuart Wilson

In 1992, as a recent graduate from Victoria University, serial entrepreneur Stuart Wilson established Netlink and grew it to a $1 million per month business before it was sold to Telstra for $30 million. Shortly afterwards, he joined Clearview in 1996 and helped build this to similar revenues, enabling it to be sold to an ASX listed entity in the dot com boom in 1999.

He originally established Modica as a creative agency, but added website hosting services in partnership with AT&T to drive repetitive income. Then, in 2002, an ambitious client asked Stuart if he could securely send bank balances via text message – the idea behind Modica was born!

Modica's mission is to enable secure two-way communication with every person and mobile device on the planet.

“Just as the Dunedin ship took New Zealand products overseas for the first time in 1882, I believe we can leverage our global relationships to take emerging Kiwi IP to the world,” says Stuart.

His vision is very much on track.

Today, Modica is a $30 million global company, providing a secure, cloud-based high-volume enterprise messaging platform for finance, IT, government, health and education organisations. The platform connects directly to all mobile networks and customer software solutions via secure APIs.

Following a number of acquisitions in 2016, including Run The Red in New Zealand, Modica now has a global footprint providing enterprise messaging solutions to a worldwide client base that includes Australia, South East Asia and Latin America.

Modica is now on target to deliver $42 million in revenue in FY22, with a strategy of owning the New Zealand and Australian markets, pivoting into new products, scaling through partners and expanding into the wholesale market.