A technologist’s passion for customer-first innovation

Rochani Steenkamp, executive head of Product at DStv

This Women’s Month, MultiChoice continues to shine a light on women whose ideas, leadership, and creativity are shaping the future of technology and entertainment in Africa. Among them is Rochani Steenkamp, executive head of Product at DStv.

Steenkamp has been part of the DStv Stream journey since its inception. From the first lines of code to the launch of beloved features like Watch from Start and Cloud PVR, she’s helped ensure the platform evolves with and for its users.

“It’s been a labour of love,” she says. “Most of the team have been here for years, we grew up building our DStv Stream baby.” The project she’s proudest of is the recent revamp, “a culmination of beautiful design and advanced AI that delivers smarter, more accurate content recommendations for customers. It was wonderful to see that we could bring first-in-continent features to our customers,” Steenkamp adds.

For her, impact isn’t an abstract metric, it’s measured in how customers feel. “We measure everything to make sure we’re constantly improving. For me, real impact is when our customer happiness score goes up after a new feature is added.”

Her interest in the tech sector was sparked by a teacher who wove together creativity, puzzles, maths, and coding into a single subject. That early passion became a career-long commitment to using tech to make people’s lives easier and more connected.

In an industry where women leadership is still at a low, Steenkamp is intentional about representation. “Women bring a completely different view than men do, and a mixed team often outperforms a male-only team,” she says. “You can be a mom, wife, nerd, techie, and a leader, all at once.”

See the YouTube short here.

Her commitment to representation is also why Here For Her resonated so strongly with her. Launched by SuperSport, the initiative began as a movement to give women in sport the visibility, resources, and opportunities they deserve. Since its launch, the campaign has evolved into a powerful, high-impact platform that celebrates women both on and off the field. “When I first heard about Here For Her, I was so excited to be working for a company that even did that,” she says. “I loved its grassroots origins and how it’s grown into this beautiful production.”

Looking to the future, she sees the greatest opportunity in content aggregation.

“There are so many streaming services out there. The magic lies in evolving our products to become the aggregator recommending content across services and making it easy for customers to enjoy.”

Her advice to young women starting their careers in tech is straightforward: “Say yes! If you get an opportunity, however small, put your hand up. I once said yes to running the Social Committee and because of that, I spent many hours with our CEO, and it changed the direction of my career.”

Rochani Steenkamp’s story is proof that in technology, the most powerful innovations come from those who lead with both skill and heart, whilst having the courage to do it their own way.