We didn't start in AI. We started in boardrooms and on stages.

The 27-year story of how communication science became artificial intelligence.

Boardroom overlooking Johannesburg skyline at sunset

Johannesburg, 1999

Where it all began

In 1999, Craig Berman and Tyrone Watkins were sitting in Johannesburg watching South African retail get it wrong. Not the products, the communication. Stores couldn't talk to their own staff properly. Brands couldn't get their message from head office to the shop floor without it dying somewhere in the middle.

So they started RCS with a simple bet: if you fix the communication, you fix the performance.

Three men planning at a table above the clouds

Three people. Different skills. Same conviction.

The Founders

They weren't tech guys. Craig was a retail strategist who understood how a shop floor actually worked. Tyrone was a creative director who knew how to make people feel something. Together, they built manual systems: physical frameworks, printed playbooks, in-person training. Systems that made Makro's point-of-sale execution the best in the country.

No software. No AI. Just structured communication, delivered by hand.

Then they kept going. Hitachi needed someone to grow their audio-visual brand in South Africa. Craig and Tyrone took it to market leadership. 700 units. R16 million in turnover. FIFA called for the World Cup Trophy Reveal in Germany. They directed it. BMW, Audi, Toyota needed South African launches. They produced them.

Showtime.

FIFA World Cup Trophy Reveal, 2006

From boardrooms to every stage imaginable.

By the time they were managing 500 performers across Emperors Palace, Tsogo Sun, and Sun International, they'd built one of the largest live production infrastructures in the region. They owned advertising cubes, ran in-house radio stations, operated digital screen networks. They even built and sold high-end properties in Houghton and Hyde Park.

But the through-line was always the same: communication is the foundation of performance.

See the Full Timeline

The AI Transformation

Fast forward to 2023. Over two decades of proving that thesis, manually. Then Liam Webb walked in. A developer who could see what Craig and Tyrone had been building wasn't just a business. It was a methodology. A system for how humans communicate effectively.

And for the first time in history, that system could be encoded into AI.

Woman ascending stone stairway through clouds

27 years of knowledge. One question: what if it could scale?

Liam didn't join to build an app. He joined to take 27 years of communication science and turn it into software that could scale to every business on earth. Three years later, 3 million lines of code later, SmartAlex is real.

It wasn't a lightbulb moment. It was a slow burn that became obvious. When AI hit a tipping point in 2023, the founders didn't see a trend. They saw the missing piece. They'd spent 27 years building the knowledge. AI was the delivery mechanism they'd been waiting for.

Meet SmartAlex

Global by Design

In 2025, the group established a Singaporean entity to house the technology, formalising the global ambition. The South African entity continues as the operational and founding base.

Today, RCS Group is an AI venture builder and investment group. The funding and development entity behind SmartAlex and a growing portfolio of AI-powered ventures. Three verticals. 74 languages. 50+ countries. One engine. Built on 27 years of understanding how humans communicate under pressure.

See Our Ventures