South African startup to join eFounders Entrepreneurship Programme

November 7, 2017 • Southern Africa, Startups, Top Stories

South Africa’s high-tech logistics and fulfilment company, Pargo is the only South African company selected to join the eFounders Initiative Entrepreneurship Training Programme in the city of Hangzhou, China. The programme is organised jointly by the Alibaba Group and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and will explore the opportunity to effectively advance and develop an e-commerce ecosystem in Africa together with the Alibaba.

The eFounders Initiative Entrepreneurship Training Programme includes a 2-week course at the Alibaba Business School and will take the 25 high-potential entrepreneurs from across Africa to learn from e-commerce giants Alibaba, Taobao.com and Tmall.com. The programme outcomes are to:

Learn how e-commerce has transformed the economy and society in China, along with learn the necessary skills required to advance the participant companies.

Develop a new era of online business, and eventually play a role in building the African e-commerce ecosystem.Empower the participants to not only apply the acquired knowledge in their home countries but also mobilise and inspire others to embrace the new economy paradigm, and

Create a local community of e-commerce champions who can support one another moving forward.

Lars Veul, director and co-founder at Pargo says: “it’s a privilege to be selected as the first South African company for this prestigious program. The e-commerce ecosystem in South Africa has seen significant growth over the last years, although last mile logistics remain one of the key challenges that we are solving, there are still many more challenges we need to deal with collectively.”

He added that to be recognized by an industry leader like Alibaba with over 18-year experience and participate in the program will without a doubt have a major impact on Pargo, and open opportunities for Pargo to enable more international partners to access South Africa and other emerging economies.

Pargo solves the challenges of last-mile logistics to enable e-commerce in emerging economies to reach every consumer in an efficiency and cost-effective manner. By using an extensive network of Pargo parcel points where people can send and receive parcels they are bridging the gap between online and offline commerce.

Edited by Fundisiwe Maseko
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