Yebo Fresh empowering township businesses with its smart technology

 By Oyisa George

Yebo Fresh is empowering South African local business owners with easy, affordable, and convenient grocery shopping. 

Photo supplied 

Yebo Fresh, an online grocery store that gives local businesses and community organizations simple access to high-quality goods and services with its smart technology, is situated in Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa.  

“At first it was like an experiment, it remained small in its first year,” says the CEO of Yebo Fresh, Jessica Boonstra. 

Yebo Fresh was established towards the end of 2018. They used to operate on weekends only in Boonstra’s garage in Hout Bay, Cape Town. She was delivering in a local community close to Hout Bay, Imizamo Yethu. 

“The business remained small until lockdown,” says Boonstra. 

The business grew from 6 to 60 people in a couple of weeks after a sudden need for food parcels in townships.  

“NGOs would come and ask for assistance by exchanging funds into food parcels,” says Boonstra. 

Boonstra and her team believed that they had a solution that could serve a population in the location during the pandemic. 

A lot of people lost their jobs during that time, and they saw an opportunity to reveal themselves to the public by employing and helping the needy.  

“Business owners would lose money by closing their businesses and going to wholesalers to buy stock,” says Boonstra. 

Yebo Fresh assists local businesses by taking care of their shopping needs. By using a vast network of trusted suppliers, it simplifies the shopping process for these businesses. Saves them valuable time and effort that can be redirected toward their core operations. 

 

It delivers to townships that are 40km from the warehouse situated in Airport Industria, In Cape Town. It sells and delivers fruit, vegetables, general groceries, etc. It delivers directly to doors in Dunoon, Makhaza, Khayelitsha, Gugulethu, Delft, Langa, Mfuleni, Mitchells Plain, and Imizamo Yethu townships in Cape Town.  

“We do not have transport where we live and it's quite a distance to a wholesaler, we have to pay more than R300 for transport,” says a Yebo Fresh customer and a local business owner, Zuziwe Maphalala. 

Yebo Fresh does' grocery shopping for local businesses and stores the goods in their warehouse and delivers them the following day.  

Yebo Fresh stepped up and partnered with NGOs like Ikamva Labantu, Breadline Africa, Homeless Friends, 4Afrika, and Winnie Mabaso Foundation just to name a few. 

At the beginning of the year, Yebo Fresh secured an R78 million investment and an R49 million grant job fund.  

This combination of investment assisted Yebo Fresh in closing equity funding ground, a pre-series A that was led by Enza Capital with E4E Africa, Elea Foundation for Ethics in Globalization, Endeavor South Africa, Simple Capital, and AkerX (Pepkor). 

“The job grant allows Yebo Fresh to accelerate its reach, technology, and empowerment of township businesses,” says Boonstra. 

The job grant's purpose is not to give equity, but Yebo Fresh does the empowerment work in addition to the service (delivering goods to customer's doorstep). Yebo Fresh is working with 25 townships with 7000 businesses in Cape Town and Johannesburg. 

“With the job grant funding, the local businesses on the Yebo Fresh platform we would empower them with additional technology, mentoring, coaching, and in some cases the highest improving stores, that are performing well in the coaching program, we upgrade their stores,’ says Boonstra. 

Yebo Fresh's mission is
to empower businesses and business owners through technology, digital infrastructure, and job creation. They plan to expand their offering from personal care to medication.