Skip to Main Content
Submit your project or idea
Co-create with community
14/20
Votes
20 votes
Refine your idea
Submit your final proposal
Jury review (pending)
Co-create with community
Remember to continue checking the leaderboard and new postings. You might get inspired by someone else approach, and have the possibility to refine your idea at a later stage in the competition.
Thanks for your vote
This voting milestone has now ended, and the idea has progressed to a private milestone
Return to idea list
Thanks for approving the idea
This milestone has now ended, and the idea has progressed to a private milestone
Return to idea list

Township Food Market

A mobile app to consolidate all township food retail businesses and restaurants in one platform, where customers can have ubiquitous access to place food orders to supermarkets and restaurants within their location radius.

Define three specific objectives that you would like to achieve with your proposal.

  • Expand business touch-points for township food retail shops and restaurants to include an online order management application.
  • Eliminate order placement queues at the physical store.
  • Provide customers a pervasive access to township food retail shops and restaurants.

What problems (particularly in value chain competitiveness and global disruption) are your community’s stakeholders facing due to the Covid-19 pandemic?

 Township residents have challenges to comply with government regulations to reduce the spread of the Covid-19 virus such as maintaining social distancing because when they want to buy groceries they are restricted to one business touch-point, a walk-in to a physical store.

What minimum viable solution(s) are you proposing to address the challenge(s) in your community?

  • Provide customers a pervasive access to township food retail shops and restaurants.
  • Provide sales reps a digital system to manage and track customer orders.
  • Provide shop owners with a tool to conduct analytics based on customer data.

Share your story (your narrative)

I've completed a prototype showing all functionality and now I'm busy developing a mobile friendly website to test the market response in my township before I develop a mobile app that will be rolled out to all townships in South Africa.

Please provide any additional relevant information that you would like to share.

Not applicable 

Public (14)
You will need to login to post a comment
Nivashini Rave Rattey May 6, 2020

Hi Sandie,
Thank you for sharing the overview of your project.
For clarity purpose, could you elaborate how exactly your solution will accommodate the social distancing protocol? Also, you may want to explain how your solution will benefit the people in your community? You could include the details in your story. For example, your story could address the incident that triggered you to develop this app, the challenges you faced in the process of development, how the application will benefit and reward the people in your community-particularly during this pandemic and finally your target audience's call-to-action.
Separately, I would like to address the part where the store owners retain customer data for analysis. Is this acceptable? Are the customers going to know about this? If in case, this could be a challenge, how you intend to resolve it?

Sandile Sibisi May 6, 2020

Hi Nivashini, thanks for your comment.
1. How will the solution accommodate social distancing protocol ?
- The proposed solution will encourage people to stay at home and shop online like other developed cities to reduce the number of people shopping on a physical store.
- The app will provide most (if not all) retail shops available to the customer township to reduce long queues in retail shops.
2. How will the solution benefit people in your community?
- The solution will provide customers a seamless shopping experience.
- Customers will be able to access their shops in a fingertip and compare prices in one platform before they start shopping.
- Save time and transportation cost for shopping at malls.
3. More details in my story:
- I'm coming from an under developed city, where most people don't have ICT applications transforming their standards of living. The online shopping Apps like Uber Eats, Mr. Delivery, Bolts Food, etc. operate in urban areas with focus to restaurants on the food retail market in South Africa. However, food retail businesses and restaurants based in townships are not catered on these applications.

I had challenges to build B2B relationships with some shop managers while developing my MVP, there was so much red tape in their businesses.

The proposed solution will benefit township residents by providing them an online access to their favorite shops based in their location, where they can buy and receive products delivered to their door. They don't h have to wake up early in the morning to join long queues in retail shops to make groceries. They will stay at home and comply with social distancing protocol during this global pandemic.

Let's build more solutions that address social distancing challenges so people can stay home safe and continue to access their valuables.

4. How store owners will access customer data for analysis?
- I mean customer data in the context of buying behavior not sensitive data. The app will not take or store any customer sensitive data to comply with POPI Act.

Patrick Obumselu May 12, 2020

How will you generate revenue and ensure financial sustainability with your current model.

Sandile Sibisi May 13, 2020

Hi Patrick,

I will generate revenue through customer orders.

I will charge a customer when s/he place an order which will be delivered to his/her location address.

Thanks

Patrick Obumselu May 14, 2020

Ok. I understand

Muyunda Kaonga May 13, 2020

Hi Sandile,
Great works you are doing to make sure that you are up to the task to help your community.
1. How will you manage logistics and which players are you going to partner with?
2. What is the expected time to receive an order if I ordered through your platform, and in a case where I cancel an order what measures have you put to manage that?
3. If I dont have internet access, how can I access your services and how do I make payments?
4. How will you make money?

Sandile Sibisi May 14, 2020

Hi Muyunda,

1. The app will keep track of the order during the placement and fulfillment process. I will partner with the local public transport association for delivery and partner with available food retail shops in townships like (Shoprite, Boxer superstore, Roots butchery, local supermarkets and butcheries, etc.).
2. All orders will be delivered on the same day, distance between the customer and the shop will be used to estimate delivery time. In an even where a customer want to cancel the order, the app will allow them to cancel before the fulfillment process. However, they will be charged a cancellation fee to avoid a number of cancellations.
3. The app will be accessible offline like banking apps to count a few. Customers will have different payment options, the app will take card payments, EFT or cash payments on delivery.
4. I will charge a reasonable service fee when customers place orders.

Israel Abazie Jun 12, 2020

Your idea bio is concise.

Your food service aggregation platform like every eCommerce stores need to place attention on logistics among other things: How long can they despatch orders? And you need some form of regulatory power

Marabe Ditshego Jul 15, 2020

Hi Sandile,
I trust you are well.

Let me congratulate you on your idea. The townships definitely need a boost and I have no doubt that your app will have a great impact on the township economy.

I wish to share a few questions and remarks for your consideration.
1. Do you plan to offer delivery services? If so, it would be good to make mention of this fact.
2. Since you’ve already developed a prototype, how about you consider changing your objectives into SMART objectives to reflect where you would like to take your prototype going forward. Visit https://thedigitalprojectmanager.com/project-objectives/ for a detailed explanation
3. It may be beneficial to show another side, from the retailers’ perspective, of how COVID-19 has negatively impacted business and competitiveness. Moreover, adding sources/citations to your points will give them credibility.
4. Consider changing your story to reflect how you and your team came together and decided to pursue this amazing venture.

James Kiruri Jul 15, 2020

Would work anywhere in the developing world

Jean Claude Niyomugabo Jul 15, 2020

That is good keep it up to provide customers a pervasive access to township food retail shops and restaurants.

Thomas Mueller Jul 22, 2020

Dear Sandile,

are you going to develop this as a native app which then need to be deployed on Android and iOS phones through the AppStore? Have you thought about developing a progressive web app instead which can work very similar to a native app, also be stored on the phone and can even work offline as well. Development might be much easier and faster and you only have one website like source code.

Achia Khaleda Jul 23, 2020

What is your business model? How do you sustain ?

Fahmida Hossain Jul 24, 2020

Hello Sandile, Thanks for sharing with us your idea. I think your initiative is still in the initial stage. What obstacles have you faced in working on this initiative?

Ricardo Martinezgarza Jul 26, 2020

Hello Sandile Sibisi,

What's novell about your proposal is that it is focused on a per-town basis to open new e-commerce opportunities for local providers of goods. I think it would be beneficial for your idea to elaborate and emphizise on the local focus (to separate it from the many similar platforms already in place). Also, your description is mainly limited to the advantages for the consumer. What are the benefits for the providers of goods?

Wish you the best

Karin Rehar Jul 27, 2020

Hello, is sounds to me like a Uber delivery, I'm I right? if so it could also create more job opportunities

Alberto Farca Jul 29, 2020

Hello Sandile,

I have read your proposal and I think this is a great idea in these times of Covid-19. My suggestion would be to try to give more context information regarding the problem you are trying to solve. A few examples of information that could be useful to better understand your idea are:

1. If there are other platforms that provide a similar service and why yours is different,
2. If you are considering payment options from the platform? Will people be ab le to pay cash?
3. Will the platform consider delivery options?

I hope this suggestions are useful to refine your idea.

DJ Koeman Aug 4, 2020

my background is in hospitality, o I love this initiative. I guess the difference between you and Jumia Eat or Uber Eat is that you focus more on the informal sector? In that sector, is there enough revenue from the customer to share betweenn you and the business?