Entrepreneurship Zone: 15 July 2025: South African entrepreneur facilitates Temu and Shein access to township market

Tue Jul 15 11:52:42 CAT 2025

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Entrepreneurship Zone: 15 July 2025: South African entrepreneur facilitates Temu and Shein access to township market

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Godiragetse Mogajane

Interview with Godiragetse Mogajane
FOUNDER of DELIVERY KA SPEED

Lives in: South Africa

  _____  

Entrepreneur Godiragetse Mogajane saw an opportunity to offer delivery and logistics services in South Africa’s townships. In 2021, he launched Delivery Ka Speed. Today the company moves goods for Chinese e-commerce platforms like Temu and Shein, and works with a range of corporate customers, including Spar and Capitec. How we made it in Africa editor-in-chief Jaco Maritz spoke to Mogajane about building the business and the lessons learned along the way.

Topics discussed during the interview include:

·         The business potential in South Africa’s townships

·         Starting out with food deliveries by bicycle

·         Why the original model proved unsustainable

·         Delivering parcels for Temu and Shein

·         Lessons learned from building a business

Watch the full interview below: (only available on howwemadeitinafrica.com)

Interview summary

In the early 2020s, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Godiragetse Mogajane returned to Hammanskraal, the township north of Pretoria where he grew up. Back in his hometown, he noticed something missing: many of the popular food delivery apps that had become common in South Africa’s cities didn’t operate in the township.

Townships are underdeveloped residential areas originally designated for non-white  <https://www.howwemadeitinafrica.com/category/countries/south-africa/> South Africans under apartheid. While these neighbourhoods have seen significant economic development in recent decades, including the arrival of modern shopping malls, they remain underserved. Roads tend to be in worse condition, internet access is often less reliable, and many homes lack formal addresses, all of which complicate logistics. Townships also tend to be located far from city centres – often as much as 40km away – making deliveries costly and time-consuming.

Mogajane saw an opportunity. He launched Delivery Ka Speed, a food delivery service tailored specifically to townships, starting in Hammanskraal. The business began in a rudimentary way: customers placed orders via WhatsApp, and deliveries were made by bicycle. Unlike established platforms such as Uber Eats, which are integrated with restaurant systems, Delivery Ka Speed relied on a manual process. Its staff would go to a fast-food outlet – such as KFC – place and pay for the order in person, wait for it to be prepared, and then deliver it to the customer, who paid in cash.

After six months of running the business through WhatsApp, the company had shown enough traction to secure angel investment. The funding was used to develop a dedicated app that allowed customers to make payments digitally, rather than in cash.

The company expanded beyond Hammanskraal into other townships and provinces across South Africa, promoting itself through social media partnerships with local influencers.

A persistent obstacle was its inability to integrate with the ordering systems of major fast-food chains, requiring drivers to place orders in-store. While Delivery Ka Speed successfully integrated with smaller township restaurants offering traditional food, large franchises were unwilling to engage with a little-known startup.

Although Mogajane and his business attracted significant media attention for their township-focused model, the operation was not making enough money. The lack of integration with major chains remained one of the core challenges.

After three years focused solely on food delivery, Mogajane concluded that the model was not financially viable. “We were at a position where finances were not looking great and we really needed to build a business that is sustainable, that can grow, and that can hire more people, and also make money. But that model failed to give us that. And, hence, we had to pivot our business,” he explains.

A Delivery Ka Speed vehicle

The company, therefore, shut down its food delivery app and pivoted to a business-to-business model, focusing on logistics in township areas.

As part of this shift, Delivery Ka Speed now moves products on behalf of large companies into townships. For instance, one of its clients is stationery company Bidvest Waltons, for which it delivers stock to retail stores. For Capitec Bank, it transports consumables to bank branches located in these areas.

Another major client is Spar, with Delivery Ka Speed handling deliveries for the retailer’s Spar2U home delivery service.

It also distributes parcels for online retail platforms such as Temu and Shein. Mogajane sees e-commerce as the company’s biggest growth opportunity. “We are pushing to get more e-commerce deliveries because we truly believe that e-commerce still has a long way to go, especially in townships,” he notes.

Mogajane says traditional courier companies face two choices when it comes to township deliveries: invest time and resources to understand the market themselves, or partner with a business like Delivery Ka Speed that already knows how to navigate it. Because the company aggregates large volumes of parcels destined for townships, it can offer clients lower delivery costs and faster turnaround times compared to general logistics firms.

Another key selling point is that its drivers are locals in the townships where they operate – an advantage in areas where security remains a challenge. “We don’t bring someone from another township to come into another township to do deliveries there, which is one of the things that really helps our business in terms of security,” he says. Familiarity with the area also allows for quicker deliveries, particularly in places where street names and addresses are less clearly defined.

Beyond logistics, Mogajane believes the business represents something bigger for township communities. “When they see our vehicles on the road they take pictures because it brings about hope and fulfilment – that it’s possible for a small business, especially a youth-owned business, to work with global giants like Temu and Shein.”

Commenting on the township economy more broadly, Mogajane suggests people often underestimate its spending power. When Delivery Ka Speed launched its food delivery app, the majority of downloads came from Apple devices, despite iPhones generally being significantly more expensive than Android handsets.

He also points to the volume of e-commerce deliveries as further evidence. “We do a lot of parcels – upwards of 5,000, 6,000 parcels a day – into townships.”

Looking back, Mogajane says he would have made key decisions more quickly, particularly the move to pivot away from the food delivery model. Even though he had the information and knew the business was struggling, he says he delayed, over-analysed the situation, and sought too much input.

He now avoids postponing decisions that could be made immediately. “Yes, we’re not always going to make the best decisions but we learn much quicker than everybody else because we get to understand what is a bad decision and what’s a good decision instead of wasting time holding on all this information that we’ve gathered and hoping that circumstances will change so that we don’t have to make the hard decision,” he says.

-Howwemadeitinafrica

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