Chris Theko
A young entrepreneur Taeli Mofelehetsi, who holds a Diploma in Accounting and Business Studies from the Institute of Development Management (IDM) says online shopping is here to make life easier for shoppers in Lesotho.
Because of the numerous advantages and benefits such as the convenience, price comparison, budgeting, no crowds and no need to travel, more and more people say they prefer online shopping over conventional shopping these days.
e-Store is a platform meant to provide e-commerce services for different entities and products. The online store was launched in April of 2020 shortly after Lesotho went into lockdown as a measure to curb the spread of Covid-19.
According to the founder Mofelehetsi, when it started the aim was to sell local produce such as vegetables.
Mofelehetsi told the Newsday Arts that although fresh produce was the aim he store was not doing well because most people wanted groceries.
“I thrive on marketing and selling local produce but we came across a challenge which gave us an idea to not limit the store,” Mofelehetsi said.
“We have now partnered with a grocery store which is Enrich where the customer that buys from our online store can get all their groceries from everything that Enrich has which include meat, cosmetics and household cleaning products”
We are currently operating in Maseru but also working on expanding to other districts, Mofelehetsi said.
He said the initiative was meant to promote online shopping which is currently in line with the National Covid-19 Secretariat NACOSEC regulations which promote social distancing and cashless transactions.
The store lists products on its website and clients can easily navigate around and add products they want to purchase into their basket and proceed to checkout before adding their details and placing an order.
We deliver the goods to the clients destination of choice within 24 hours and transactions are done before the delivery and are cashless.
We still hope to exclusively market and sell local produce more because we understand that by promoting and selling local produce, we will be growing our economy and simultaneously creating jobs, he said.
He said increasing demand for local produce is bound to force producers to increase their production and thereby create jobs along the value chain.
This will create jobs and increase our buying power. It will also increase market demand and a fast and large circulation of taxable currency contributing to the growth of the economy.
He said while his vision was to promote local produce globally with the intention of exporting it, the platform also offers business development consultancy services.
Purchasing items and products online is a very easy task to do. It is now playing a very important role in everybody’s life especially elderly people, as well as people with a very busy life schedule. But now more than ever when physical distancing is encouraged, this form of shopping provides a very comfortable and safer service for its customers, by being able to save them the trouble of going out to buy groceries.
