SOUTH AFRICA – Walmart-owned South African retailer, Massmart has reached agreement to acquire 87.5% of the issued shares in OneCart.
This is in line with its strategy to invest in and accelerate its e-commerce presence and compete with the likes of Shoprite’s highly successful Checkers Sixty60 on-demand delivery service and Pick n Pay’s Bottles service, now dubbed Pick n Pay ASAP!
As a fast-moving consumer goods marketplace and logistics platform, OneCart partners with leading retailers in South Africa to enable fast, flexible and efficient online sales and home delivery to consumers across the country.
This transaction adds another dimension to Massmart’s omni-channel retail offering and enhances their strategy of meeting customers where they want to be met.
“We are excited by the opportunities that this acquisition presents. eCommerce continues to grow rapidly, both in South Africa and for Massmart, contributing up to 3-4% participation in overall retail sales.
“We don’t expect this growth trend to change and have embarked on implementing the fundamental building blocks required for a strong ecommerce offering. This includes, but is not limited to, on demand retail,” said Vice-President: Group eCommerce at Massmart, Sylvester John.
The platform provides consumers access to a host of complimentary product categories via a single shopping interface, allowing the Company to further expand its capabilities in the fast growing on-demand delivery segment, while continuing to support the independent retailer marketplace model of OneCart.
“It is our intention to maintain and grow the diverse and competitive retail composition of the OneCart platform whilst also investing significantly in the underlying technical platform, in-store picking processes and last mile distribution toward further enhancing the customer experience.
“We look forward to supporting and learning from the team at OneCart and expanding our ability to serve customers more effectively,” concluded John.
Closure of the Transaction will be dependent on finalization of customary final approvals and suspensive conditions.
The company is eyeing an eCommerce growth potential of 17-26x current online sales through a seamlessly integrated retail and wholesale multichannel proposition.
Toward this end it has established a unified group-wide eCommerce capability, increased existing stake to 100% shareholding in Wumdrop to enhance last mile delivery.
Massmart is also revamping its logistics capabilities under the makro.co.za, game.co.za and builders.co.za online user interfaces, including key functionalities like search, to provide a more seamless and intuitive customer experience.
The company is further developing a new transactional and value-adding mobile first digital solutions that cater to different customer occasions, journeys and segments, including participation as anchor retail tenant on the Vodapay Super App.
Further they are strengthening and expanding its order fulfilment capabilities such as on-demand and same-day order fulfillment, ‘ship to home’ capability from distribution centres to supplement store fulfilment capacity and improving the click-and-collect customer experience in stores.
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