Zulzi built the initial Checkers Sixty60 platform and is still maintaining it, including the customer app, the app used in stores, dashboards, the order allocation engine, and integration with Â鶹ԭ´´ POS.

MyBroadband asked Zulzi about its involvement in developing Checkers’ original on-demand platform and since it revamped it.

“Yes, Zulzi built the initial Checkers platform, and we are still maintaining it. Zulzi still plays a major role, with over 34 Engineers, project managers, and quality assurance coming from Zulzi,” it said.

It also provided background information about Zulzi’s operations, which extends beyond on-demand grocery deliveries to liquor and pharmaceutical deliveries from seven dark stores.

Pharmaceutical deliveries include prescriptions where users can upload their script to the app and claim from their medical aid scheme in real time.

“The Zulzi platform was recently revamped and is currently processing over 5,000 daily orders from our own dark stores,” the company said.

“Our dark stores are located in Johannesburg North, Pretoria and Centurion. We have continued to grow at 80% year on year, and we currently have 300 drivers on our network.”

Zulzi said its current average delivery time is 17 minutes from a customer placing an order to it arriving at their address. The service is available seven days a week from 06:00 to 23:00 daily.

Founder Vutlharhi “Donald” Valoyi launched the company in 2013 with the intention of improving the speed at which online shopping packages are delivered in South Africa.

In 2015, Zulzi started delivering books and electronics to students within an hour, and its user base grew rapidly.

Zulzi appointed Michael Netshipise as chief technology officer to capitalise on the growth. He developed a platform which made it possible to order various products online and get them within 60 minutes.

Zulzi’s exceptional growth grabbed the attention of major retailers in South Africa, including Checkers.

Valoyi said Checkers was interested as it had no legacy systems at the time.

“We started to chat to them when they realised that we could build world-class systems that address some of their complex problems,” he said.

This included a new system for replacing missing products in real-time, a major challenge in online grocery retail.

Zulzi built the customer-facing app, the engine that manages product catalogues, and a dashboard to administer orders, users, and store managers.

It was an immense success, with Checkers Sixty60 quickly becoming a leader in the space.

“Sixty60 has been a huge success and an example of what we can do when we work together,” said Valoyi.

“Big corporations must be more flexible and be open to work with startups and allow them freedom to continue to grow.”

Checkers Sixty60 winning streak

Shoprite-owned Checkers  the Sixty60 platform in November 2019, and it has reported strong sales growth each year.

The company’s latest operational update for the year ended 30 June 2024 revealed that sales on the platform .

The platform launched as the Covid-19 pandemic broke out and South Africa entered its lockdown. It was initially only available in select areas of Sandton, Johannesburg, and Cape Town.

“Sixty60 will offer unrivalled convenience because it does all the hard work for you,” said Shoprite Checkers chief on innovation and strategy Neil Schreuder said at the time.

“In our time-pressed society, providing consumers with a swift, on-demand grocery delivery service is like giving them back time: today’s most precious commodity.”

“The name Sixty60 captures the service’s main ambition: for customers to order groceries in sixty seconds and have them delivered in as little as sixty minutes,” he added.

Many believed that the online grocery delivery market would die down after Covid-19 lockdowns were lifted. However, services like Checkers Sixty60 have continued to grow.

Within 18 months, Checkers Sixty60 climbed to the top of the list of South Africa’s top grocery shopping apps, with more than 1 million downloads.

By December 2023, Checkers Sixty60 downloads stood at over 4.5 million, and the service expanded to 505 stores.

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This follows the success of its Checkers Sixty60 platform, which dominates on-demand grocery deliveries in the country.

The company’s latest interim results revealed that the on-demand grocery delivery service recorded  during the first half of the 2023/24 financial year.

Checkers Sixty60 helped drive Shoprite’s half-year sales, which saw growth of about R121 billion, representing a 13.9% year-on-year increase.

Shoprite recently launched an online on-demand delivery service designed to support spaza shops and small retailers through its .

The fully automated online shopping system lets these customers browse and purchase a wide range of goods in bulk.

It says the service offers competitive pricing and complimentary delivery within a radius of 50km.

Shoprite Group head of B2B business e-commerce, Mark Cotton, said the service will help support small businesses and spaza shops facing high transport costs and challenges meeting demand.

“We are committed to supporting small businesses by providing innovative solutions to the specific problems these enterprises face,” he said.

Cotton added that the new service eliminates the need for businesses to hold excess inventory, freeing up cash flow and time for business owners.

Shoprite said the new system also streamlined the purchase and fulfilment store for Cash & Carry in-store traders.

Traders can access customer and product information, build and fulfil orders, and save orders for repeated use in future.

Customers using the platform can pay via credit and debit card, electronic funds transfer, store credit, cash on collection, and Shoprite Money Market Accounts.

They can also benefit further with savings and promotional offers through the Xtra savings loyalty programme.

Shoprite and Checkers launched Sixty60 in November 2019 during the height of the Covid–19 pandemic.

Initially only available in select Sandton, Johannesburg, and Cape Town locations, it had accumulated more than 3.1 million downloads by March 2023 and expanded to 466 by September that same year.

While many believed its popularity was due to the lockdowns implemented during the pandemic, the service continued to grow at an immense pace when they were lifted.

The company behind Zulzi — one of the country’s first successful fast-moving consumer goods apps — developed the customer-facing app for Checkers Sixty60.

Checkers Sixty60 launched a loyalty programme, Xtra Savings Plus, in September 2023.

The R99 monthly subscription offers customers unlimited Sixty60 grocery deliveries, additional in-store deals, and personalised promotions.

Checkers Xtra Savings Plus subscribers get the following benefits:

• Unlimited free Sixty60 deliveries, provided they spend a minimum of R350 (non-subscribers pay R35 for delivery)
• A 10% discount on in-store purchases up to a maximum of R200 in savings
• Double personalised offers in-app and in-store
• No long-term commitments, with subscribers able to pause or cancel their subscription at any time with a money-back guarantee

Around the same time, the company partnered with Discovery Vitality to .

“The addition of Checkers as a partner promises an even greater health impact,” said Dinesh Govender, CEO of Discovery Vitality.

Shoprite chief strategy and innovation officer Neil Schreuder said the move would help Checkers and Sixty60 customers make healthier food choices.

Shoprite credits much of its success over the past five years to its rollout of Â鶹ԭ´´â€™s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software.

“When you walk into a Shoprite or Checkers supermarket and see a full range of products stocked, displayed, priced and with promotions clearly marked, that is what the ERP system does for us,” it told MyBroadbad.

It added that Â鶹ԭ´´ also helped make Sixty60 successful.

“Â鶹ԭ´´ Retail is the source of the stock ledger and real-time sales, which are essential for accurate fulfilment of customer orders,” Shoprite stated.

“The ERP also provides promotional information, prices and article data to Sixty60, which ensures that the prices on Sixty60 are the same as the prices in-store.”

Implementing the software wasn’t all smooth sailing, with Shoprite partly blaming delays in the rollout for a shocking earnings report in 2019.

However, in January 2019, it assured stakeholders that the upgrades were complete and had already observed improvements.

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