Interview: Takealot CEO Kim Reid

Loading player...
Thank you for listening to the TechCentral podcast. In this episode, Takealot.com CEO Kim Reid chats to Duncan McLeod about the past, present and future of South Africa's biggest online retailer.
In the podcast, Reid talks about the e-commerce market in South Africa and explains how Takealot is positioning itself to take advantage of anticipated growth.
Reid goes through the history of Takealot, how he -- a former Naspers executive -- got involved in the business, and the path to the company's anticipated profitability in about two years' time.
He explains the difficulties involved in e-commerce logistics in South Africa, how Takealot is preparing for so-called "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday" later this month and how those days affect sales on the site, and tells TechCentral whether he's building Takealot to sell it to an international player such as Amazon.com. Spoiler: he isn't.
It's a great podcast, providing real insight into the e-commerce game in South Africa. Don't miss it!
14 Nov 2017 English South Africa Technology · Business

Other recent episodes

TCS | Herotel CEO Van Zyl Botha on beating Starlink to South Africa

Amazon’s Leo satellite constellation is coming to South Africa in 2027 through Herotel. TechCentral deputy editor Fanie van Rooyen speaks to Herotel CEO Van Zyl Botha about Evry, the brand that will sell Amazon Leo to South African homes, and about how a company with no local licence walked into…
14 Aug 22 min

Meet the CIO | Derek Wilcocks on how AI personalised Vitality

Discovery group CIO Derek Wilcocks on personalised Vitality, the limits of AI coding and why growth beats cost-cutting. Derek Wilcocks, group CIO at Discovery, says AI has finally given the group the ability to do something it has wanted to do since Vitality launched more than 25 years ago: personalise…
13 Aug 50 min

TCS | Money just became native to the internet - Steven Boykey Sidley

Steven Boykey Sidley has been a chief technology officer at a Fortune 500 company, a private equity investor, a videogame designer, a jazz musician and, for the past four years, a professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg. He is a partner at Bridge Capital, heading its futures advisory,…
12 Aug 45 min

TCS+ | How AI is turning hardware into a subscription service

For most of business history, buying technology meant owning it. Capital was set aside, servers and laptops were hauled into the building alongside the software licences, and the business then sweated those assets for as long as it practically could. In the age of AI, that logic is starting to…
6 Aug 19 min

TCS+ | iStore Business on why Apple makes sense for SMEs

For small and medium enterprises, technology must do one thing above all else: get out of the way. Unlike large corporations with dedicated IT departments, SMEs run lean – and every hour spent wrestling with systems is an hour not spent on the business itself. In this episode of TechCentral’s…
30 Jul 37 min