Bonjour,
Here's what I've got for you today:
- Takealot gets a new CEO
- Moniepoint processed over 5 billion in transactions in 2023
- OfferZen's CEO resigns after raising $4.34m
Takealot gets a new CEO
Takealot has announced a change in leadership, with Frederik Zietsman succeeding Mamongae Mahlare as Group CEO on February 1, 2024. Mahlare will assume the role of executive chair.
Zietsman has been with Takealot since 2015, starting as a profitability analyst and later as the head of a marketplace. In March 2021, he became the CEO of Takealot.com.
Takealot recognises the changing market and emphasises the streamlining of responsibilities between Takealot.com and the Group CEO to better allocate resources and focus on their primary online marketplace and retail platform.
The company hopes that more efficient leadership will better align with and achieve its main growth objectives.
The leadership change occurs at a time when Amazon's imminent entry will heighten competition.
In October 2023, Amazon revealed plans to open a marketplace in South Africa. The company’s planned launch in South Africa is expected to challenge Naspers-owned Takealot's long-held dominance in the local eCommerce market.
On January 10, 2024, Naspers planned to boost its investment in its online retail platform, Takealot.
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Moniepoint processed over 5 billion in transactions in 2023
Nigerian fintech startup Moniepoint processed more than $5 billion in transactions in 2023, indicating a significant rise in businesses’ use of its Point of Sale (PoS) terminals.
The number of businesses using its services exceeded the 600,000 mark reported in 2022, even though it didn’t reveal precise numbers.
In 2023, Moniepoint's transaction volume soared to over $150 billion, a significant leap from the previous year's $100 billion. Between 2022 and 2023, total processed transactions increased from 1.7 billion to over 5 billion, with a total value of over $150 billion.
Moniepoint's PoS terminals enabled 3.3 billion of these transactions, while Monify, the company's web platform, handled over $10 billion.
Although the fintech did not disclose specific numbers for the August 2023 launch of its personal banking product, monthly account openings increased sevenfold.
TeamApt, founded in 2015 to provide payment infrastructure solutions to financial institutions, shifted its focus in 2019 to offer direct financial services to Nigerian businesses. So, in 2023, it rebranded to Moniepoint.
While Moniepoint did not disclose the number of PoS terminals in the country, Intelpoint's Nigerian Financial Services Report revealed that OPay had the most PoS agents in Nigeria — 563,252 — accounting for 37.17% of the country's 1.5 million PoS agents as of December 2022.
Moniepoint had the second-highest number of PoS agents — 303,946 — 20.06% of all PoS agents in the country. However, sources within Moniepoint say that the number has increased significantly since 2022.
OfferZen's CEO resigns after raising $4.34m
OfferZen, a South African company, has raised a $4.34 million (R82 million) funding round and announced the departure of its CEO, Philip Joubert, after three years.
AI Capital, with partners Roger Grobler, Nic Kohler, Willem Roos, and Michael Jordaan, and Invenfin, represented by partners Peter van der Zed and Theo van den Berg, participated in the funding round.
Matt Beck, the former VP of Marketing, will take over after Joubert steps down.
“Matt has played a pivotal role in advancing our business for scalability, demonstrates a strong affinity for our brand, and embodies our values. I'm pleased to pass the baton to him,” Joubert said.
Two brothers, Philip and Malan Joubert, launched OfferZen in 2015. The company is a curated marketplace that links over 100,000 developers with over 2,000 businesses in South Africa.
The platform enables businesses to hire developers by providing upfront information about skills, roles, and salaries. Developers can create free profiles, browse job postings, and receive assistance with interviews and offers from their talent advisor.
In addition to its usual per-hire fee, the software developer hiring marketplace offered a fixed-fee unlimited hiring subscription to lessen the financial burden on tech companies.
OfferZen hinted at significant platform updates in the pipeline, promising new AI-driven features to enhance candidate and company connections in the coming months.
Last week on Techpoint Africa
- Lagos State launches land registration portal to eliminate middlemen
- PalmPay to block users who do not revalidate their NIN or BVN by January 31, 2024
- Kenyan agritech startup, Shamba Pride, raises $3.7 million pre-Series A to strengthen its operations
- Zero Carbon Charge to complete South Africa's first fully off-grid EV charging station in Q2 2024
- Interswitch, OPay partner for secure payments, following reported fraud cases
- Anambra State to partner 26 big tech companies following the adoption of the Nigeria Startup Act
- Briter Bridges: No cause for alarm over 2023 funding decrease
- How smartphone manufacturers are dealing with inflation in Nigeria
- Twiga Foods and Incentro agree to settle debt dispute out of court
- M-PESA faces another outage in January for undisclosed reasons
- AltSchool Africa launches in Kenya to continue East-African push
- Moroccan startup Crealo gets $1.42 million seed funding to scale its management system
- OPay to enforce KYC requirements in March 2024 to prevent fraud and impersonation
- Zimbabwe to arrest Starlink distributors and users
- China’s MiOne launches locally assembled smartphones in Uganda
- Egypt-born DXwand secures $4 million Series A fund to expand its AI platform to Africa
- Over 13 million new Netflix users joined in Q4 2023, with 5.05m from Africa, the Middle East
- Anambra's tech hub ambition and why 2023's funding dip isn't a big deal.
- Egypt-based beauty startup Mira raises $200,000 to support growth
- Lessons from layoffs: Your startup might need to downsize soon
- Strong fundamentals maintain investor interest despite Nigerian startup funding dip
What I'm reading and watching
- South African Regulator, FSCA, to Start Issuing First Batch of Crypto Licenses
- Pre-Historic African Religions are MIND BLOWING
- Band of Horses - The Funeral
Opportunities
- Kenyan startups focused on embedded finance, future fintech, SME productivity tools, and content like local gaming and mobile advertising can apply for Safaricom’s Spark Accelerator programme. For more information, check this out.
- The International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) is looking for an editor to support the Arthur F. Burns Fellowship. Apply here.
- Application for the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) Class of 2025 is now open. Check out the one-year, fully sponsored, graduate-level programme in tech entrepreneurship here before March 18, 2023.
- Do you live in Nigeria and work with a local or foreign company? Whether it's remotely, on-site, hybrid, full-time, part-time or as a freelancer, @TheIntelpoint is trying to understand the Nigerian workspace: how you work, and toxicity in the workspace among others. Please, fill out the questionnaire here.
- Explore this website to find multiple job opportunities in Data that align with your preferences.
- If you are a software engineer, creative designer, product manager, design researcher, or a techie looking for an internship role, please, check out this website.
Have a great week!
Victoria Fakiya for Techpoint Africa.
