Curating Brilliance
We design AI‑first businesses.
Production agentic systems, working demos, and teams trained to run them — built for enterprise, industry and government.
We're not a slide factory. CAT.design is two founders and a hand-picked bench — consultants who build, engineers who ship, creatives who make it land. If it doesn't work in production, it doesn't count.
01 — AI.design
AI, By Design
Our flagship practice takes organisations from AI‑curious to AI‑first — we find where AI pays in your business, build the systems, and train the teams that keep the advantage compounding.
Systems Review
A fixed-price review of your stack and workflows: where AI creates value, what to build first, and a prioritized build plan you keep.
Agentic Systems
AI assistants, automation, data pipelines and dashboards — production systems integrated into your stack, not demos.
Capability Programs
Hands-on AI training for founders, executives and operating teams — tool-agnostic, outcome-measured, built to stick.
02 — Approach
Beyond Conventional
Strategy-firm rigour, an engineer's bias to ship — and no junior pyramid.
We're a small team that designs and ships: strategy from ex-BCG/Bain consultants, systems from engineers who put them into production, and training that makes them stick. Every engagement is scoped, priced and delivered by the founders you meet on day one.
01. Innovation & Curiosity
We try the unobvious route first — new tools, new angles, and working prototypes over long decks.
02. Integrity & Trustworthiness
Honest about what AI can and can't do. We build lasting relationships on proven results, not hype.
03. Quality & User-Centricity
Built for the people who use it: practical, intuitive, and finished properly.
03 — Divisions
Four Disciplines, One Bench
We staff each engagement with the mix the problem actually needs — never a fixed org chart.
AI.design
Taking organisations from AI-curious to AI-first: fixed-price systems reviews, agentic systems and automation built into production, and capability programs that embed the advantage in your team.
STRATEGY.design
Dissecting complex business challenges, charting clear pathways for growth, efficiency, and strategic alignment.
TECH.design
Technology, data and AI engineering — robust, scalable systems built for production.
PRODUCT.design
Product development from concept and industrial design to UX — including hardware we engineer and supply ourselves.
CREATIVE.design
Specializing in creative content creation and film production, bringing stories to life and building engaging brand experiences.
04 — Selected Work
Impact In Action
A sample of recent engagements. Client names withheld by design — the work speaks for itself.
Putting AI to work for a leading SA founder community
A retrieval-augmented community assistant, a member health-scoring engine, and data pipelines that halved preparation time — now a productised AI practice serving founders, executives and operating teams.
Data platform for a livelihoods development programme
A production ETL pipeline feeding interactive dashboards that track SME growth and job creation across South Africa.
Market sizing across the Middle East & South Africa
Retail and private-equity engagements: market entry, sizing and growth strategy delivered as implementation-ready roadmaps.
Hardware engineering for sustainable agriculture
A low-cost LED grow-lighting rig and cloning gel formulation engineered for SprootTech, an agritech startup growing low-cost farming skills in Africa.
SmokeSignal
Satellite wildfire alerts for South Africa — live fire tracking built on public satellite data.
Flowga
A local-first AI yoga instructor — webcam pose analysis with on-device vision models. No data leaves your machine.
EntangleRL
A reinforcement-learning agent that discovers optimal quantum circuits from scratch — no domain shortcuts.
Also in the wild: SeeMyCity (municipal finance transparency) · 25+ open builds on GitHub →
05 — Founders
Who You Work With
A technical founder and a commercial founder — strategy-firm rigour, operator pragmatism, and a builder's bias to ship.
Keshav Mohabir
Co-Founder — TechnicalMechatronics engineer (UCT, Honours Distinction) turned strategy consultant turned AI engineer, with Stanford Online's Machine Learning certificate under Andrew Ng (98%). Keshav cut his teeth on complex problems at Boston Consulting Group and Bain & Company, co-founded an on-demand grocery startup, and steered Bolt Food's Cape Town operations through its COVID pivot to grocery delivery. He now leads the AI.design practice — building agentic systems, data platforms and AI capability programs for scale-ups, enterprises and funds.
Shulka Mohabir
Co-FounderFinance and business development leader: ex-Citi, where she managed 21 client financing programs across Sub-Saharan Africa unlocking R100M+ in capital, and a McKinsey Next Generation Women Leaders '23 alumna. Shulka has run a R6M SME development programme that created 127 jobs, and founded ventures in sustainable fashion and regenerative agriculture.
06 — Insights
Thinking Out Loud
Agency in the Age of AI
On AI agents as junior teammates for African SMEs — delivered at an investor day.
The Cutting Edge
From ChatGPT-as-search-bar to architecting AI solutions for business growth.
Vibe Coding Sessions
Agentic systems built live on stream — bugs, fixes and all. First sessions coming soon.
07 — Careers
Join us
We keep a short bench of consultants, engineers, designers and filmmakers — hired for judgment, not headcount.
If you build things properly and get bored easily, introduce yourself:
careers@catdesign.ltd08 — Contact
Facing an Intricate Challenge?
Goes straight to the founders — we reply within one business day.
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- If it's a fit, we set up a 30-minute scoping call