Stocktake: Nigeria’s Gokada launches ‘super app’

Last mile delivery services are one of the factors driving growth in Nigeria’s ecommerce sector; and as delivery, logistics and transportation start-up, Gokada, expands, it has also launched a ‘super app’ for customers seeking food, ecommerce deliveries and ride-hailing in one app.

Nigeria’s Gokada launches Super App

As it crosses US$100 million in annualised transaction value, Gokada, the Nigeria-based last mile delivery, logistics and transportation start-up, has launched a ‘Super App’. Gokada customers can now access food delivery, ecommerce, and ride hailing services in one app. The Super App launch comes as Gokada crosses US$100 million in annualised transaction value, having completed 1 million food delivery and ecommerce orders on behalf of over 30,000 merchants in the last 12 months alone. With increasing internet penetration and ease of mobile payments, the ecommerce sector in Nigeria is set to grow and last mile delivery is set to drive this even further. Gokada is looking to serve this growing market with expansions from its current base in Lagos, across multiple cities in Nigeria, including Abuja, Port Harcourt, Ibadan and Ogun. It plans to leverage its recent NIPOST license for cross-country courier and logistics services as it expands across the country. Nikhil Goel, CEO of Gokada said, “The ecommerce and delivery market in Nigeria is growing at an exponential rate and will be worth US$20 billion over the next few years. Much like in India and our counterparts in other emerging markets, Gokada is building a transport infrastructure from the bottom up, using well-trained riders, powered by technology, to connect businesses large and small with a consumer base in its millions. This launch is core to our objective of positioning Gokada at the center of Nigeria’s ecommerce and delivery revolution.” Gokada currently works with the likes of Eden, Krispy Kreme and Sooyah Bistro, and will continue to build out its technology and G-pilot infrastructure to support Nigeria’s growing business community.

Design with Clout

An exhibition of South African art and design curated by Clout SA creative director Tracy Lee Lynch,  titled Right here, Right Now! will form part of Decorex’s Cape Town Design Trail this month, and mark the official launch of Clout SA, a purpose-first enterprise, creative agency, and business-to-business (B2B) market-maker for South African design. It’s goals are the promotion of South Africa’s creativity, craftsmanship, heritage, and creating opportunities for collaboration between designers and makers. While many members of the public will be finding out about Clout SA for the first time, the agency’s team has been hard at work building up to this moment for nearly seven years. Much of that work was done on Clout SA’s founding project, the Nando’s Design Programme and eventually, the Nando’s Portal to Africa, an online shopping platform for designer furniture that has facilitated more than R60 million worth of sales across 20,900 products since it was launched in 2018, making it one of the country’s largest exporters of South African design. There are approximately 1,200 Nando’s restaurants located across the globe from Washington DC to Dhaka, and each space showcases bold, bespoke furniture items which are procured through the Portal to Africa.

FreshStop joins Survivor South Africa

FreshStop has signed up as a key sponsor of the new series of Survivor SA, which started June 3, 2021 on M-Net. The agreement sees FreshStop join as the food sponsor of the production that was filmed on the Eastern Cape’s Wild Coast. For the first time in eight seasons, 20 castaways from across South Africa are competing to be the ‘Sole Survivor’ on South African soil. FreshStop, joins brands such as Mahindra, Cape Union Mart, OUTsurance and the Wild Coast Sun, as key sponsors of this season. FreshStop at Caltex, has consistently focused on healthy choices through its Health Essentials counters in stores. FreshStop’s sponsorship sees them providing the food and ‘all the fixin’s’ for winners of a reward challenge.

Takealot opens Richmond Park Cape Town Pickup Point

Property investor and developer Atterbury has been chosen to develop a new distribution facility and Pickup Point for Takealot, South Africa’s largest online retailer, in Richmond Park, Milnerton, Cape Town. The new Takealot facility at Richmond Park will initially be 6,700m² and include two expansion opportunities with the potential to reach approximately 17,000m², providing Takealot with the flexibility to expand in line with its growth. The development will break ground in July 2021 and be ready for Takealot to begin operating in March 2022. Takealot will join Aramex, Cape Fruit Coolers, CTM, Mustek, Scoop, ACDC Dynamics, Corex and Sequence Logistics which are operating from the 84ha Richmond Park development situated on the N7, including and Richmond Corner’s convenience centre. Richmond Corner shopping centre opened in July 2020, introducing 6,500m² of convenience retail to the park. The fully-let centre has a selection of 22 stores, anchored by Pick n Pay, Woolworths Food, and Clicks, with a variety of convenience stores and takeaway options.

This week in numbers

50

After declining by five points in the first quarter, the RMB/BER Business Confidence Index (BCI) jumped by 15 to 50 in the second quarter. This means that the number of respondents satisfied with prevailing business conditions now, equal those that are unsatisfied – an outcome not seen in years. While the improvement in sentiment is no doubt encouraging, uncertainties remain. Confidence rebounded especially sharply in the manufacturing, retail trade and motor trade sectors. By contrast, sentiment among building contractors and the wholesale trade sector improved only marginally.

Manufacturing confidence jumped from 25 to 46 on the back of further increases in both domestic and export sales. Also encouraging, was the breadth of the recovery in production output spanning just about every sub-sector surveyed. In some cases, the resurgence of activity in the second quarter would have been even more striking were it not for manufacturers battling with shortages of certain raw materials, delivery delays and other bottlenecks related to the lingering COVID-19 pandemic. Various risks such as the fast-spreading third wave of infections, the danger of additional lockdown restrictions being imposed, Eskom’s electricity grid that looks increasingly unstable, and the looming threat of industrial action could easily still knock confidence in the period ahead.

QUOTE of the week:

“In the Labour Law space, legislation and regulations are already in force that provide for new company policies to be implemented in the workplace to provide for the mandatory vaccination of employees,” said Nikita Theodosiou, an associate at Consilium Legal, on Retailing Africa this past week.

Main image credit: Clout SA.

*Stocktake is a weekly roundup of current FMCG retailing and brand news, curated and edited by Retailing Africa Publisher & Editor, Louise Burgers. Keep the industry updated and send your announcements and news to: news@retailingafrica.com.

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