How Ropafadzo Musvaire & Bekithemba Ngulube help increase informal retailers’ margins with Kweza
In this interview meet Ropafadzo Musvaire & Bekithemba Ngulube, two co-founders of the Kweza founding team.
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So Kweza is sort of a last mile logistics solution that is working with informal retailers in South Africa. The team noticed that the informal retailers, called spaza shops in South Africa, often pay a premium for their products.
So the solution that they came up with is to source the best pricing from a wholesale level, aggregating the demand and buying power from the spaza shops while allowing the the spaza shop owners direct orders at a steep discount through the Kweza mobile app and delivering their orders directly to their stores.
In the interview Ropa and Beki speak about
- How they initially tested their idea in the offline world going out to wholesalers and spaza shops doing their research
- How they work as a panafrican team, how they got to know each other through the MEST incubator program
- And what drew them into entrepreneurship individually
We also speak about the biggest challenges they faced in their entrepreneurial journey and their biggest learnings as well as their advice for young people in South Africa.
There are a lot of valuable insights in this interview that Beki and Ropa share and we hope you enjoy the interview as much as we did. And now, without further ado, enter Beki & Ropa.
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Thomas
Thomas is initiator of Africax.org, co-founder of ecological sanitation company EcoToiletten, digital automation agency Strandschicht and the non-profit tackling youth empowerment YES Founders Foundation. He co-authored a book on Youth-led Changemaking and coaches entrepreneurs on resilience and mental well-being.
