Focus {04}
Social & chat commerce
What does a store look like when it lives inside WhatsApp?
Why it matters
Plenty of South Africans already buy through WhatsApp, Instagram and TikTok messages. The tools behind those chats are thin: no live stock, no easy way to pay, no order history, and sellers juggling it all on one phone.
What we want to testQuestions for the lab.
- 01
Can a whole store, from catalogue to payment to tracking, live inside one chat?
- 02
Does a short video from a real seller sell better than a studio shoot?
- 03
How do sellers keep track of orders that arrive across five different apps?
Open problemsWorth a company?
- 01
Orders arrive as messages, screenshots and voice notes, and get lost.
Pitch a fix - 02
Taking payment in a chat means sending bank details and waiting for proof of payment.
Pitch a fix - 03
Social sellers have no customer list they own if a platform changes its rules.
Pitch a fix
Got a commerce problem worth a company? We want to hear it.
A few lines is enough: the problem, who has it and why now.