The man running South Africa’s biggest online store

Frederik Zietsman is the CEO of Takealot Group, South Africa’s largest e-commerce company.

Zietsman is a chartered management accountant with many years of experience in business analysis and optimisation.

He has been at the helm of the Naspers-owned group since February 2024. Prior to that appointment, Zietsman was CEO of Takealot.com for nearly three years.

The 42-year-old has been charged with leading South Africa’s top online store and one of the country’s biggest on-demand delivery services at a time of intensified competition from global heavyweights.

Zietsman attended the prestigious Paarl Boys’ High School in Western Cape, where he matriculated in 2001.

Thereafter, he studied a BComm Management Accounting degree at Stellenbosch University, where he graduated in 2005.

One of Zietsman’s first jobs was as an accountant in structured commodity finance at BKB GrainCo in Paarl, where he worked from early 2006 to 2009.

In mid-2009, he moved to work as an accountant for the manufacturing division of Lindsay Corporation.

Just over a year later, Zietsman was appointed as business analyst at the liquor giant Distell in Stellenbosch.

He was promoted to commercial business analyst team leader for Southern Africa in August 2011, a position which he held until June 2014.

After more than a year as a revenue growth management specialist, Zietsman began his stint at Takealot.com as a profitability analyst in November 2015.

After nearly two years in that role, he was promoted to Head of Marketplace and later Head of Retail and Marketplace.

After Takealot co-founder Kim Reid stepped down as CEO in February 2021, Zietsman became Takealot.com CEO.

Takealot.com posted an annual profit for the first time since its launch in its financial year ending 31 March 2024.

However, the larger group had an albatross around its neck — clothing retailer Superbalist — which was struggling to compete against Chinese apparel shops Shein and Temu.

A month into Zietsman’s appointment at Superbalist, Daily Investor learnt that Takealot Group was investigating selling the retailer.

Superbalist was sold to a consortium of retail and private equity investors led by Black Canvas Capital, effective 1 September 2024.

Other major changes under Zietsman’s leadership were the launch of the TakealotMore subscription service in May 2024 and the commencement of operations at a third distribution centre in Durban.

Fighting off the big guns

Piling on pressure from the growing popularity of Shein and Temu, Zietsman’s appointment came just three months before the world’s biggest e-commerce retailer, Amazon, launched its local marketplace.

However, Takealot has continued to show encouraging signs of strong performance — including much better Google Search Trends performance than its main competitors.

According to Internet traffic analysis platform Similarweb, Takealot ranked as the 14th most popular website in South Africa and the top e-commerce website in the country in March 2025.

Takealot parent Naspers’ latest interim results showed that the company’s sales figures remained healthy amid Amazon.co.za’s launch and hype around Temu in South Africa.

Gross merchandise value for the half-year ending 30 September 2024 reached R746 million, up from R654 million over the same period a year ago.

Although Takealot’s adjusted earnings before interest and tax swung from a $1 million profit to $12 million loss, this was primarily due to the one-off impact of the Superbalist disposal.

Speaking in an interview on Business Talk in July 2024, Zietsman said Takealot’s knowledge of local customers’ demands and unique challenges were among its key advantages over global rivals.

“We have got local market knowledge, we understand South Africans, we have a lot of data on how the consumer behaves and what their preferences are,” Zietsman said.

“There are also nuances that sit in our brand that we can leverage.”

While he agreed that Amazon had a slow start in South Africa, he emphasised that the company could become a fierce competitor.

He said one of the disadvantages that Takealot had was that Amazon benefitted from research and design investment that probably exceeded Takealot’s annual turnover.

Zietsman believes that key to e-commerce growth in South Africa will be tapping into underserved markets in lower-income areas, like townships.

This customer segment tends to be less educated and resourceful when it comes to online shopping.

To help take on this challenge, Takealot launched its Personal Shopper initiative, which seeks out people with social capital and equity to shop on behalf of their communities.

“We need to make sure that we are servicing everyone equally and that is going to need deliberate attention in certain markets,” Zietsman said.