Business28.06.2024

Takealot’s big fight against Amazon Prime

Takealot is heavily focused on growing its subscription offerings in South Africa and will add many new services in the coming months and years to increase the value it offers to subscribers.

In the future, this could even include radical measures like launching a streaming service.

Speaking at a recent media roundtable in Cape Town, Takealot Group CEO Frederik Zietsman said that while Takealot does not currently plan to launch a streaming service, the company is not ruling out the possibility that it could happen in the future.

He said the Takealot Group can execute a project of this scale and would work with a partner to achieve it.

However, Zietsman said that Takealot is committed to investigating and deploying the services that its customers want the most.

If its research found that a streaming service made sense, Takealot would seriously consider creating one.

This move would be comparable to Amazon’s Prime Video offering, which is included in its Amazon Prime subscription service.

However, Zietsman speculated that “copying a Prime model might not make sense” for Takealot.

“Maybe South African consumers want something else. Maybe accessible healthcare, maybe content. I’m just saying that streaming is one of the elements that is possible in the future,” said Zietsman.

Any new streaming service would likely be added to Takealot’s existing TakealotMore subscription service, which it launched in May.

Unlike Amazon Prime, TakealotMore offers two subscription tiers — Standard at R39 per month and Premium for R99 per month.

For orders with a minimum value of R500, the Standard plan offers two free same-day deliveries and collections per month and unlimited free next-day deliveries and collections.

The Standard subscription also provides one free Mr D takeaway order with a minimum value of R150 and one free Mr D grocery order with a minimum value of R350.

Premium provides unlimited same-day, next-day, and standard deliveries and collections for Takealot orders, as well as ten free deliveries of bulky items in a month.

On Mr D, Premium subscribers will get five free deliveries for orders with a minimum value of R150 and unlimited grocery deliveries for orders with a minimum value of R350.

Takealot Group head of external affairs and public policy Tshepo Marumule, Takealot Group CEO Frederik Zietsman, and Takealot Group Head of Legal Johannes Burger

Zietsman said the service already offers tremendous value to South Africans.

“I looked back at my savings over the last month and have saved over R1,200 on delivery fees. There are real, tangible savings that I get because I don’t pay for the threshold,” said Zietsman.

“A barrier with e-commerce has always been that you need to pay R500 to get free delivery. With TakealotMore, you don’t have to. You can buy a bottle of water and have it delivered free,” he said.

Zietsman added that TakealotMore’s current value lies in being the only subscription service in South Africa that offers grocery, restaurant, and general merchandise delivery in a single offering.

“There is no other subscription programme like that, and I would be hard-pressed to come up with anyone else that could do that in South Africa,” said Zietsman.

Takealot has seen excellent adoption and retention for TakealotMore, with the majority of customers who signed up for the free trial staying after the trial expired.

Zietsman said that Takealot is happy with TakealotMore’s performance to date and wants to expand the service substantially over time as part of its larger business strategy.

“What you see today from TakealotMore is milestone one,” said Zietsman.

“There will be many more milestones as it becomes what it is supposed to be.”

Zietsman said Takealot is already working on its next “milestone” that will provide subscribers with “certain privileges, discounts, and promotions.”

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