Naspers-owned South African online retailer, Kalahari.com has selected global commerce platform provider, Hybris, to boost its retail business.<\/p>\n
According to Kalahari, the Hybris Commerce platform will enable the site to support its expanding online operations – which include consumer-to-consumer (C2C) and business-to-consumer (B2C) retail, and also cater to a growing number of mobile shoppers.<\/p>\n
The platform will boost Kalahari’s capacity to deliver digital goods such as eBooks, as well as a large expansion of its online catalog of digital and physical goods.<\/p>\n
The Hybris platform will allow the online retailer to cope with increasing data and transaction volumes, and reduce site management and development costs.<\/p>\n
Kalahari.com is owned by MIH Internet Holdings, which forms part of the Naspers Group.<\/p>\n
“All our retail businesses and especially kalahari.com are highly customer centric, hence a large part of our IT focus is on delivering core platforms that enable the business to deliver the best customer experiences,” said Michael Needham CTO MIH E-Commerce Africa and Middle East.<\/p>\n
“At large scale and across a continent, this becomes particularly challenging, but with hybris in place we have a foundation to build upon that will free up up our IT teams to focus on the more innovative edge of our customer offering going forward.”<\/p>\n
According to Needham, cloud and mobile are a strong focus for the company.<\/p>\n
Speaking at the 2013 uAfrica eCommerce Conference in Sandton on 11 September, Head of Marketing at Kalahari.com, Liz Hillock said noted that the e-retailer had seen a significant spike in mobile users, particulary in terms of tablets.<\/p>\n
A survey conducted by Kalahari in June 2013, revealed that purchases made by customers accessing the site on tablets had seen \u201cmeteoric\u201d growth of 70% year-on-year.<\/p>\n
According to Hillock, Kalahari has invested over R1 million on opening and developing its mobile platforms.<\/p>\n
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