eCommerce is an interesting space to keep an eye on in South Africa. There's plenty of VC flowing into the sector, which tells me they're on a 3-10 year plan to start turning around what has previously been known as a "tough sell".
In eCommerce, we're still absolutely dominated by airline ticket sales. From what I remember, 2012 was about R9 billion in airline tickets and R2 billion in "other" eCommerce. Still... when was the last time you bought an airline ticket from a travel agent? That's what the VC's are betting on. The culture will spread, like it has in other digitally empowered nations.
I asked on Twitter who people thought were the biggest vs most exciting in the South African eCommerce space. Answers were interesting.
BIGGEST eCOMMERCE PLAYER IN SOUTH AFRICA (crowd voted):
In eCommerce, we're still absolutely dominated by airline ticket sales. From what I remember, 2012 was about R9 billion in airline tickets and R2 billion in "other" eCommerce. Still... when was the last time you bought an airline ticket from a travel agent? That's what the VC's are betting on. The culture will spread, like it has in other digitally empowered nations.
I asked on Twitter who people thought were the biggest vs most exciting in the South African eCommerce space. Answers were interesting.
BIGGEST eCOMMERCE PLAYER IN SOUTH AFRICA (crowd voted):
- Kalahari.net (6 votes)
- TakeALot (3 votes)
- Woolworths (2 votes)
- iTunes SA
- Pick 'n Pay
- Bid or Buy
- Groupon South Africa
- Zando
- Kulula
- Amazon
- Mr Price
MOST INTERESTING eCOMMERCE PLAYER IN SOUTH AFRICA (crowd voted):
- Yuppie Chef (4 votes)
- CityMob (4 votes)
- TakeALot (4 votes)
- NicSocks
- Daily Dish
- Dion Wired
- Incredible Connection
- TravelGround
- LekkeSlaap
- Zando
- Go Gifting
- Ormsdirect
- SA Camera
- PrintWild
- Safari Now
- One Day Only
- 5 Rooms
Are there any gaps? Essentially, we've crowdsourced a little hit list of interesting players to research in the eCommerce space. Nicely done lads and lasses.