Nedbank, Vodacom and now retail giant Pick n Pay are among the growing list of SA corporates to back the locally-made Mara phone. The Android-based phone is the brainchild of pan-African entrepreneur Ashish Thakkar, CEO and founder of the Mara Corporation, which opened a high-tech smartphone factory at the Dube TradePort Special Economic Zone (SEZ) north of Durban in October. Thakkar has committed to investing R1.5 billion in the new plant, around half of which has already been invested. The Durban plant, which has created more than 200 new jobs, followed the opening of Mara’s first phone factory in Rwanda earlier in October.