South Africans love a spot of online shopping, and the numbers bear testimony to that.

Takealot is leading the way, and CEO Kim Reid has offered a little bit of insight into what kind of numbers the business’ books see each month.

Despite the fact that some South Africans have grown weary of what they say is Takealot’s questionable sales tactics, the online retailer boasts some very impressive sales figures.

Reid, who was speaking with Bruce Whitfield on eNCA’s Taking Stock, said that Jumia, a Nigeria-based e-commerce platform, makes “roughly around 25% of our revenue”.

Given that Jumia’s numbers are public, some basic maths fills in the gaps.

Here’s MyBroadband with the details:

If Jumia makes around 25% as much revenue as Takealot, it is easy to calculate how much money South Africa’s largest e-commerce player rakes in.

Jumia reported revenue of €130.6 million (around $147.5 million) in 2018, which translates into R2.197 billion.

This means Takealot’s revenue is around R8.79 billion. This means the company makes over R700 million in revenue per month.

This is a significant increase from its turnover of R2.3 billion in 2017, when it processed over 2.9 million transactions from around 1 million customers.

A cool R700 million a month – not bad at all.

Still, those figures can’t be relied on as gospel, and with some industry insiders putting the annual revenue at closer to R5 billion, or around R417 million a month:

According to these industry players, Superbalist and Spree added in the region of R1 billion to Takealot’s revenue, but that it is still not enough to bump revenue to nearly R9 billion.

Reid did use the word “roughly”, so we will cut him some slack.

Either way, those are impressive numbers.

[source:mybroadband]