Deer in the headlights {{ FIRSTNAME }}? This autonomous delivery bot insisted on standing in the worst place possible. Apparently, it malfunctioned, standing there for 15 minutes, and neither Uber Eats nor its operator could convince it to move. Shame. 🫣
In This Open Letter
Going Deep: Waking SA’s trillion-Rand township to Ecom.
Local: OM’s 10x bid & Home Affairs in hot water again.
Tech Jobs: New roles at Pollinate, Entrosta & more.
Market Watch: The top stocks & markets this week.
Around the Web: Horse fishing, goalie goals & a Wolfy.
Seen our new website?
We’ve featured hundreds of exciting South Africans startups, scale-ups and new tech, and you can read about all of them on the new site.
But there are also proudly local tools and suppliers for building a business, weekly SA business and tech events, ways to connect with us and get featured and how to join our community.
TRENDING NOW
Takealot’s Plan to Unlock the R900bn Township Economy
South Africans bought online in record numbers in major metros, but the real 10x growth opportunity lies in activating rural SA…
SA’s R130bn e-commerce sector boomed, with spending surging nearly 50% year-on-year over the past festive season.
But the sleeping giant of SA’s R900 billion–R1 trillion township economy is still at risk of being excluded from SA’s broader digital economy, despite serious inroads in ICT infrastructure, logistics and access to an ever-growing range of payment solutions.
Why? Well, digital literacy remains a serious challenge, especially in rural and township communities. Which is something that SA’s undisputed, home-grown market leader, Takealot, considered alongside another well-known fact in SA, our abysmal unemployment rate, to find a uniquely South African solution.
Creating jobs by bringing e-commerce to SA’s far-flung places
We gotta be honest, we were a little sceptical when we first heard about Takealot’s Personal Shopper Programme – because the word “personal shopper” usually brings to mind luxury assistants for the elite. But Takealot is repurposing the concept for the South African mass market. In this model, the personal shopper is a digitally-savvy community liaison.
They act as a trusted intermediary for those hesitant to use an app, helping neighbours browse and purchase everything from electronics to apparel. It solves two problems at once: it bridges the digital literacy gap and provides a commission-based income stream for local youth.
Digital, done the SA way
Personal Shoppers earn commission on every successful order, with no cap on potential earnings, with higher-demand items like apparel often drawing higher incentives, making it a great side hustle opportunity.
Check out this personal shopper story:
It’s a really human way to take a digital offering to places where even expensive advertising probably can’t reach, and a smart move on Takealot’s part to use community members to bake trust into transactions in the face of growing competition from internationals like Temu and Shein.
We can just imagine it driving everything from rural fridge deliveries to new local youth soccer kits, and we’re watching this space…
Have your say…
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IN SHORT
Easing you into the weekend…
🛵 Woolies’ Dashing 2025. In the last six months, Woolworths’ online channels have seen some lekker growth with the retailer’s on-demand food service Woolies Dash growing by 23%. Nice one.
✔️ Getting Their Affairs In Order. The Association of Communications and Technology (ACT) is challenging the Department of Home Affairs’s increased fees for identity verification services in court, after a staggering 6’500% price hike. HA were properly undercharging at 15c per check, but goodness gracious…
🔒 Locking It Down. Old Mutual got the green light from the Competition Tribunal to acquire a majority stake in 10X Investments for a cool 2.2 billion Rondt. Old Mutual Private Equity has been investing in 10x since 2014. Lekker man.
🇿🇦 MS’s SA AI Play. Microsoft SA’s AI Skills Initiative has trained more than 1.4 million South Africans in AI fluency and skills development in the last year in a bid to prepare more people for high-tech jobs in various industries. Love to see it.
🌾 Operations Simplified. InteliGro struggled with fragmented data and manual admin in their agri software. So Octoco built a unified system that cut admin, standardised crop recommendations and enabled faster, data-driven decisions for farmers and advisors.*
* From our partners. Find all the best service providers for your business in our Founder Stack.
WHAT YOU SAID
Monitoring vitals…
Yesterday, we showed you how Google’s backing Teledoctor’s at-home chronic health tech in SA, asking what’s tracking your health right now. For most, it’s a smartwatch…
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⌚ A smartwatch doing its best (52%)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🧪 Old-school home medical devices (10%)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📲 My phone + good intentions (9%)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 😅 Absolutely nothing (29%)
Your 2 cents…
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READY FOR A MOVE?
Jobs in Tech
🛡️ Senior Frontend Developer (Angular) @ Pollinate
🧑💻 Senior Full Stack Software Engineer @ Entrostat
😎 Tech Lead @ LexisNexis Shared Services
🧑⚖️ Senior Software Engineer II @ LexisNexis Shared Services
🐍 AWS and Python Developer @ Equal Experts
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MARKET WATCH
All this week’s big movers and shakers
All performance measured from 23 Jan → 29 Jan 2026
Top 5 JSE stocks: Commodity and materials stocks surged as copper and platinum prices jumped on supply concerns, lifting mining and processing companies:
COPPER360: +34.29%
BRIKOR: +16.67%
LABAT: +14.29%
EASTPLATS: +12.90%
JUBILEE: +11.46%
Gold: Surged to record highs by +7.89% from R80 319.04 last week to R86 655.75 this week as investors piled into safe-haven assets amid renewed global uncertainty and falling bond yields.
Bitcoin: Fell by –3.96% from R1 443 304 last week to R1 386 171 this week as risk assets sold off amid global equity weakness and profit-taking following January’s crypto rally.
Ethereum: Fell by –2.41% from R47 632.8 last week to R46 482.9 this week as higher-beta crypto assets underperformed during a broader risk-off move and post-rally profit-taking across digital markets.
AROUND THE WEB
Have some fun…
📊 Tool to Try: Wolfy is an independent Google Ads AI that explains why performance changes, so founders stop wasting 300 hours a year staring at dashboards.
⚡ That’s Interesting: Indigenous South Americans used to go horse fishing: by herding horses into pools, electric eels would shock and exhaust themselves on the horses, making them safe to collect.
🥅 Next Level: Watch Benfica goalkeeper Anatoliy Trubin score the match-winning goal against Real Madrid last Wednesday night.
🗺 Hack: A simple visual guide to help you tell apart Greenland and Iceland.
🌍 Wow Site: What country should I live in lets you pick the things you care about and shows you which countries in the world best match those.
