Vinny Lingham – The Internet Enterpreneur

Vinny Lingham is a South African entrepreneur and businessman responsible for the development of the popular Identity Protection and Management Startup Civic (CVC). Lingham already had a lot of experience from his previous endeavors, as he was the founder of a few successful startups. He was the man behind the SiliconCape project, an NGO aiming to give birth to a technology hub with significant influence in Africa, including Cape Town. He also co-founded the investment fund Newtown Partners, which acted as an incubator to support startups such as Sweep South and Augmentors.

Vinny Lingham – Founder of Many Successful Online Companies

Vinny Lingham is a South African of Indian origins born in East London in 1979. Soon after completing high school studies at the age of 17 he went to the University of Cape Town to study Information Systems. He didn’t complete his studies due to the country’s financial instability and the market crisis during 1998.

He is currently an entrepreneur and the founder of several successful online companies. Notably, Vinny founded Gyft & Yola, Inc in 2003 and currently serves as its CEO. In the same year, Vinny also co-founded the marketing firm incuBeta, an investment holding company and its subsidiary company Clicks2Customers. He was the CEO of these two companies. One of Vinny’s most innovative projects is Civic – the well-known identity protection and management startup.

Career and professional accomplishments

Three years after launching incuBeta and Clicks2Customers in 2006, Vinny was chosen as an Endeavor Entrepreneur, and in 2009 he was recognized a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. In 2007, he launched Yola, a web development platform. In 2012, he co-founded Gyft, a mobile gift card company. In just two years, he was able to make Yola the leading service in the gift card industry. In 2014, he ended up selling Yola for more than $54 million.

In 2014, Vinny was one of the investors on a South African TV show called Africa’s Dragons’ Den. In 2016, he was one of the participants on the follow-up to Dragons’ Den, Shark Tank South Africa. In November 2016, he made headline news by using Bitcoin to finance a company on Shark Tank. And in 2017, he participated on Undercover Angel, a non-profit National Geographic TV show. He also co-authored “I’m In: Essential Advice for Entrepreneurs”, a book for investors and businessman alike.

Civic (CVC)

It was only in 2015 that Vinny launched Civic (CVC), his first project in the cryptocurrency space. Civic is a startup company that specializes in encryption identity information using smart contracts that reside on the Ethereum blockchain. Civic offers a personal identity verification protocol that works over the blockchain to provide the best security and management for digital identities.

Civic aims to provide a quicker, cheaper, more secure and more efficient identity verification process for companies, institutions and individuals. With Civic, companies and individuals can streamline their identity verification processes.

In 2017, Vinny launched the project’s Initial Coin Offering (ICO) and was able to raise over $33 million in funding. Civic quickly developed its capabilities and in August 2017 partnered with WikiHow, to enable encrypted login functionality.

Vinny Lingham has made significant contributions to the cryptocurrency space, particularly with Civic. Through this great project, he was able to deliver an Identity Verification and Protection platform that enables users to protect their identities without relying on services from a third-party.