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- Lunga Hamilton Momoza co-founded Basket E-commerce.
- Basket is a business-to-business, e-commerce marketplace.
- It enables tech-enabled distribution to connect producers with vendors in underdeveloped communities.
- For more stories, visit the Tech and Trends homepage.
A young university student's muffin-selling business was ground to a halt by the Covid-19 pandemic – but spending some time at home gave the now 24-year-old Lunga Hamilton Momoza an idea that prompted him and some friends to start building "Amazon in Africa", when they got back to campus.
Momoza started studying for a politics, philosophy and economics degree at Stellenbosch University in 2019, but focusing exclusively on his studies would prove to be a challenge, due to his entrepreneurial ambitions.
On top of the muffin-selling operation he was running out of a university residence, Momoza was also a part of the Stellenbosch University Launch Lab, an incubator for small businesses.
He said this would open up a "journey of opportunities", and teach him some of the lessons of becoming a competitive businessman.
Momoza said he came up with the idea for what would become his start-up on 20 September 2020, just before returning to campus as lockdown restrictions eased somewhat.
"Prior to me coming back to campus, I identified that there were many informal traders in the township where I came from, who were lacking the means to access affordable products for their shops," said Momoza.
He said these traders, such as spaza shops, are generally not viewed as economically important, but that's not the way he sees it.
"They are really important businesses as they close the gap of employment and food security in informal settlements and townships in South Africa."
On returning to campus, Momoza sat down to chat about the issues faced by these vendors, who operate in township settings, with some like-minded individuals.
He said:
While the idea has morphed over time, essentially Momoza wanted to use technology to link vendors, like spaza shops, with producers, such as farmers, so they could procure products to sell in their shop at an affordable price point.
So the idea for Basket E-commerce was born.
Essentially, it is a business-to-business, e-commerce marketplace that enables tech-enabled distribution to connect producers with vendors in underdeveloped communities.
The business was formally registered in October 2021, but was given a boost in 2020 when the team won the Stellenbosch #Ideasforchange innovation challenge and, with it, R20 000.
Momoza told SMF News that the prize money was reinvested into the business to further develop their business plan.
The technology required to make the business work was finished late in 2022 and, on 5 January 2023, Basket began rolling out in the Kayamandi township in Stellenbosch.
Big success
Momoza said he was nervous about the technology being rolled out, but their expectations were blown out of the water almost immediately.
"Our target was to achieve 55 shops in the month of January, but we did 55 shops in two days."
Basket had a team of 15 sales agents, who were employed from the local community.
"It was a new year and they now had a new job opportunity that they can make a living," said Momoza.
"It was really a moment of joy because now we were making a real-life impact because those individuals that got hired were individuals that didn't have any employment."
After just over six months of operating, Basket now has more than 450 registered customers in Kayamandi and Bloekombos in Kraaifontein, and has facilitated around 6 000 transactions so far on the platform.
And Basket wants to support these vendors, so they can grow and make more regular purchases through the platform.
Taking its toll
Momoza has now graduated and is focusing on Basket full-time.
He said the stress of being an early-stage entrepreneur is something nobody can prepare you for.
"Last year, while I was still studying, I had a sense of comfort and security.
"Now, I am dependent on this business, not only for myself, not to be unemployed, but also to make sure the rest of people on my team are employed.
"That amount of responsibility and stress taught me a lot about responsibility, and making sure that things get done on time."
He said the transition between university and running a business was tough.
"That transition was really quite tricky, because at university you tend to relax and just focus on submitting your assignments, and the stress stops there - but, with business, the stress really continues."
Ambitions
Momoza said the successful pilot of the Basket technology made him optimistic for what the company could achieve in the future.
He said they want to roll out across the African continent, starting with southern Africa, where he said there were more than three million informal traders.
After that, he wants Basket to operate in western Africa, targeting countries like Ghana and Senegal.
He said there were also informal traders in southern Asia and South America that could benefit from the service.
There are also plans for Basket to add to its offering by introducing a micro-financing service.
He said one of the biggest challenges for informal vendors is working capital to grow their business and to purchase stock. Traditional lending agencies often don't want to provide loans.
A micro-financing solution will allow customers to procure products through the platform, even when they are struggling with working capital levels.
"My dreams for Basket are really quite big and ambitious," said Momoza.
