I was recently asked whether I felt that the closure of the four online shopping portals -- SA Camera, Style36, 5 Rooms and Kinderelo -- by media giant Naspers, was an indication that South Africa was not yet ready for online retail and that there was no money to be made in the industry. My answer was immediately confirmed by a Naspers announcement that its intentions were to restructure to focus on its general online store, Kalahari.com. That's not to say ...

The free Wi-Fi for the masses initiative, Project Iziswe has recently partnered with the Western Cape Government's Department of Economic Development and Tourism to open up hot spots in specific public spaces in the Western Cape province. Headquartered about 50km from the Cape Town, the project initially started in Stellenbosch and has since started rolling out its services in the City of Tshwane in November last year. The Western Cape government has partnered with "top non-profit organisations" to replicate the model that ...

From Chile to Vietnam and Poland to Kenya, online food delivery marketplace Hellofood also known as Foodpanda has spread to a massive forty countries in less than two years and is now being hailed as Rocket Internet's fastest expanding venture. This recent announcement, reaffirms the startup's aim of being a global venture. Using Hellofood, customers are able to have food delivered to their doorstep which, on the other hand, means that it helps restaurants increase sales through online and mobile ...

Launching an online business, or taking an existing business online, requires a new set of skills for anyone who is used to a more traditional bricks-and-mortar retail environment. There are new ways to market, new ways to deliver your product – and new ways to ensure you don’t become the victim of thieves or fraudsters. Whether you are an experienced online retailer or a relative novice, these are the questions you need to ask and answer to protect yourself from online ...

Based in Cape Town, South Africa timetoreply helps sites measure how quickly they respond to customer enquiries which then helps them improve their response time. The startup has announced that the popular entrepreneur Chris Staines who's been voted among the world’s top seven entrepreneurs in 2000 by Business Week Magazine has recently invested in the company. Dane Spear started to develop timetoreply in 2012. The algorithmic software could be used by website owners to measure how fast sales agents were ...

Miami-based Venture Hive, an accelerator and incubator, has launched in Tanzania in a move to help entrepreneurs there get access to training and skills to launch and build their tech start-ups while they are still on campus. Venture Hive will work with the Tanzania Commission for Science & Technology and the Dar Teknohama Business Incubator to launch an education programme to help university students at five Tanzanian universities start up while still studying. Announced in Moscow on Monday at the LIONS@FRiCA meeting ...

Entrepreneurship means setting sail on a whirlwind adventure without a boat and the hope that you'll be able to build a ship along the way. It is the impossible, the improbable and magnificent all at the same time. Giving up everything of themselves, entrepreneurs will work to build their proverbial ships. On Ventureburn we cover a lot of startups and we have seen our fair share of kickass companies birthed in Africa. Behind those amazing companies are some very dedicated entrepreneurs ...

One of the most common obstacles for online shopping in Africa is fraud or the fear of fraud. To enable a system that promotes legitimacy or implementing incentives that help sellers gain the buyers' trust, online marketplace Kaymu Nigeria has recently launched its Seller Referral Scheme and Seller Pathway programmes. These enable Kaymu’s users to earn money without selling any products, sellers to increase their overall performance and the platform to improve its overall traffic as well as quality. With operations ...

InVenture is a credit score for anyone with a mobile phone. In order to expand its phone-based personal finance software, InSight, which generates financial identities and credit scores for the underbanked in South Asia and Africa, the startup has recently raised US$1.2-million. According to the startup, there are an estimated 4.5-billion people without formal credit scores in the world. In order to help this underbanked market, InVenture is aiming to meet the demand of the majority of people based in South ...

When choosing to go into business, the majority of individuals often make this decision in order to move away from a ‘job’ and towards the freedom and opportunity that the concept of being ‘in business’ carries. However, they do not realise that there is a critical difference between creating a business that will function as a craft, and creating a business that functions as an enterprise. In my view, most SMME owners are simply craftsmen and women who own a job, ...