Gidon Novick

Gidon Novick

Gidon Novick is a South African entrepreneur known for his significant contributions to the aviation, hospitality, and social impact sectors. Gidon was born into an aviation family in Johannesburg, his father, Dave Novick, was a key figure at Comair for over 50 years. Gidon spent his entire schooling career from 3-18 years old at King David Linksfield.
Gidon qualified as a chartered accountant with a BCom (1991) and BAcc (1993) from the University of the Witwatersrand, and an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

Gidon is best known for founding Kulula.com, South Africa’s first low-cost airline, in 2001, and co-founding Lift Airlines in 2020, introducing innovative, customer-focused models like flexible booking policies. While in the industry he also launched the SLOW lounges into South African airports. He served as joint CEO of Comair and later as CEO of Discovery Vitality and head of digital at Discovery. After leaving corporate life, he founded Lucid Ventures, a venture capital platform supporting entrepreneurship, and Home Suite Hotels, a boutique hotel brand.

His current ventures include an innovative retirement housing brand called Circle Senior Living.

He is chairman of SA Harvest, a non-profit addressing food insecurity in South Africa via its food rescue model.
He is married to Lindie, and they have 4 children who attended King David Linksfield before moving to Cape Town where they finished their schooling at Herzlia.

Gidon is dog obsessed - he has 7 rescue dogs. He is committed to balancing his hectic life with lots of exercise (yoga, swimming and running) and his favourite activity is running on the mountain with his dogs.