Career – Future Businesses
These entrepreneurs are breaking new ground and offering personalised customer service at a click of a button
DONALD VALOYI, Founder and CEO of Zulzi (above, right)
Zulzi is an on-demand delivery platform where busy people can order groceries from all major retailers and get them delivered to their doorstep within an hour. This business used to be an e-commerce platform, where we sold books and electronics to students.
The idea matured when students started wanting to buy more things online and get them quicker. We worked on the platform introducing new categories such as food, groceries, liquor and pharmaceutical products and went live with the app. At first, we were doing the deliveries ourselves. We later realised that delivering food was complicated and there was also competition from Mr D and UberEats. That’s when we decided to concentrate on groceries.
It took a while to get the whole system working – getting the personal shoppers to stay on the platform and drivers to get to the shoppers on time. We continue to learn and look for ways to refine our platform to make it more useful to our customers. We don’t work in isolation. We compete with other platforms and this drives us to always innovate.
We started with no partnerships, but now we have companies that want to partner with us. Some brands even want to advertise on our app, which we find really appealing. We’ve also been trying very hard to penetrate the middle-income market, that means finding ways to making our products even more affordable. We offer specials subsidised by retailers.
FEZILE MOYANA, Webmaster for the Department of Provincial Treasury
Have I Been Paid is a web-based online invoice enquiry application to speed up the payment of service providers/suppliers. It saves them the time and money of physically visiting government offices to check on their payments. It also monitors invoices as soon as someone has been given an order, so that the department can see who is failing to pay, as this is the leading cause of small businesses going under. The customer or company can also monitor progress as soon as the invoice is submitted. The app has been piloted in the departments of Health, Provincial Treasury and Sport Recreation Arts & Culture in the Eastern Cape.
Putting this app together was a challenge I thoroughly enjoyed. We had to put in extra time with late nights and a whole lot of research to get it up and running in six months. This is only the first stage of the app. The beauty of digitalisation is that it’s ongoing and there’s always room for upgrades to make the application user friendly. There’s more research to be done to get the suppliers’ input so that the app can also be tailored to their specifications and make the process easy.
THULI HLONGWANE, Founder of Prim-U and Primlancer
Prim-U is an app that creates job opportunities for people in the beauty industry by connecting them with customers. From my 20 years of experience in IT programming, I saw the convenience that apps like Air BnB and Uber were giving people, so I wanted to do the same in the beauty industry, because it’s one of the things I’m passionate about. The biggest challenge was sorting out the technology side.
The other challenge was introducing the concept to people, because I still get asked from a service provider point of view, how the app works because it’s not something that’s common. I simplify it by saying, “you’re offering your services anywhere at any time, kind of like an Uber for beauty and wellness.” I’ve also discovered it’s easier to explain it to someone who is already a mobile therapist because they’re already doing it, but now they need to do the bookings via the app. The customer does everything to request the service and then the service provider just gets a message telling them that they’ve been booked on a particular date and time. I feel very positive about the growth potential of this app. It’s exciting for me.
GIGI LAMAYNE, Founder of MyFixer and MyFixer Pro
MyFixer is an application aimed at empowering young unemployed people and turning their vision into more of an entrepreneurial vision. We specialise in creating opportunities for artisans, beauty therapists, childminders, domestic workers and tutors. We want South Africans to become their own bosses. The idea came about in 2014 after seeing qualified artisans standing on the streets holding placards, hoping to be given a job for the day. This seldom happens as people are scared to hire them because crime is at an all-time high in SA.
MyFixer verifies the professional service providers by running background checks on them at our Midrand offices. Once successful, they’re trained on how to use the app. The app also has the geolocation feature, which allows for the service providers to not need to travel far to a client. It was a costly venture to get the self-funded app up and running. We’re looking at collaborating with companies that sell household products as there’s a lot of advertising opportunities on our app. We want MyFixer to be a market space where people can buy and render services, and make money in an efficient way.