Takealot is ready for the Amazon challenge: Bob van Dijk

Takealot Group has built a powerful e-commerce and logistics platform that will stand it in good stead in an increasingly competitive market, Bob van Dijk, CEO of parent Naspers, said on Monday.

Asked for his views on reports that Amazon.com is poised to launch an e-commerce marketplace operation in South Africa early next year and how this might impact Takealot, Van Dijk told TechCentral that the “merits” of what Takealot has built over the past decade are “quite profound”.

“I was in South Africa two weeks ago and spent a lot of time talking to people around how they experience the service. Takealot has built a very well-organised logistics and delivery network and they have spent more than a decade doing that, and doing it at scale, which allows for efficiency and predictability,” Van Dijk said.

“They have been able to launch a customer proposition that people really like … and, with very few exceptions, people are enthusiastic about the quality of service, the pricing, the logistics and the predictability of it. That’s not very easy to replicate,” he said.

Last week, US publication Business Insider, citing leaked documents, reported that Amazon planned to launch online shopping services in South Africa and four other countries by early 2023. The South African launch, said to be codenamed Project Fela, is reportedly happening next February. South Africans will also get access to Amazon’s Prime membership programme soon after launch of Amazon online shopping in the country, Business Insider said.

‘Real strength’

Amazon has long had a presence in South Africa through its cloud services business, Amazon Web Services. In fact, a portion of AWS’s cloud offering was originally developed in Cape Town and the city is host to a large (and growing) Amazon software development centre. The company has invested significantly in data centre infrastructure in the country, too, opening a data centre region in Cape Town in 2020.

“There is always going to be competition in a market that is growing, and e-commerce is certainly growing in South Africa – and that competition is a healthy thing,” said Van Dijk.

“But,” he said, “to build something of the efficiency and scale and customer friendliness that Takealot has built is not very easy to do. Yes, this means more competition, but … what Takealot has built is quite profound. They are very much a customer-first operation that has done this in-market – this is a South African company run by South Africans for a long time – that has a real strength.”  — © 2022 NewsCentral Media