OneCart CEO Aidan Johnson on SA's on-demand shopping boom

Loading player...
Aidan Johnson, appointed by Massmart to lead on-demand delivery platform OneCart, believes South Africa is on the cusp of huge growth in online shopping – and that everything is to play for.
Johnson, who joins Duncan McLeod on this episode of the TechCentral Show (TCS), talks about the OneCart business, why Massmart bought it and where it’s headed.
The conversation delves into:
• Why OneCart works with third-party retailers that compete with Walmart-owned Massmart, the parent of brands such as Makro, Builders and Game;
• How OneCart fits into Massmart’s overarching e-commerce strategy for South Africa;
• The state of the e-commerce market in South Africa, including the on-demand segment, and the impact that Covid has had on its development;
• With the launch of Amazon.com’s retail marketplace operators in South Africa looming large, the impact this will have on the local retail industry – are local retailers ready to take on the global e-commerce giant?;
• The outlook for e-commerce growth in South Africa for the rest of the 2020s and what needs to be overcome for online sales as a percentage of total retail sales to reach 15%, from 5% now.
Don’t miss a fascinating discussion about online shopping in South Africa and how local retailers – including Massmart and OneCart – are preparing for significant disruption to the retail sector in the years ahead.
16 Nov 2023 2AM English South Africa Technology · Business

Other recent episodes

Pick n Pay’s Enrico Ferigolli on Penny, the AI that shops for you

Pick n Pay has switched on an AI shopping companion called Penny inside its asap! app, and in this episode of the TechCentral Show, retail executive for omnichannel Enrico Ferigolli takes editor Duncan McLeod through what it does and why it matters. Built on Google's Gemini models, Penny lets customers…
2 Jul 9AM 23 min

Charge’s R1.8-billion bet on an off-grid EV future

South Africa has fewer than 400 public electric vehicle charging stations – up from zero just 15 years ago – and EV adoption remains stubbornly slow. Yet Charge, formerly known as Zero Carbon Charge, is betting big that a coast-to-coast network of off-grid, renewable-powered charging stations is exactly what’s needed…
18 May 9AM 37 min

TCS | The Cape Town start-up listening for TB with AI

AI Diagnostics, a Cape Town-based med-tech company that has built an AI-powered stethoscope designed to detect tuberculosis, recently raised R85-million in a pre-series-A funding round. In this episode of the TechCentral Show (TCS), Nkosinathi Ndlovu speaks to the company’s CEO, Braden van Breda, about the funding round and its mission…
4 May 3AM 36 min

Werner Lindemann on how AI is rewriting the infosec rulebook

The pace at which artificial intelligence is reshaping the threat landscape is outstripping the ability of most organisations to defend themselves, with shadow AI, synthetic identity attacks and a looming quantum computing disruption all converging at once. That’s the view of DataGroupIT CEO Werner Lindemann, who joined Duncan McLeod on…
15 Apr 9AM 38 min

Donovan Marsh on AI and the future of filmmaking

Award-winning South African film director Donovan Marsh has pivoted to artificial intelligence filmmaking and believes generative AI tools could fundamentally reshape how movies are made – and who gets to make them. Marsh, whose 30-year career includes directing the Hollywood submarine thriller Hunter Killer starring Gerard Butler and Gary Oldman,…
7 Apr 4AM 52 min