{"id":880689,"date":"2026-10-22T17:15:04","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T15:15:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=880689"},"modified":"2026-10-22T17:15:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T15:15:11","slug":"south-african-who-grew-up-barefoot-with-no-water-and-electricity-and-built-an-iconic-app-that-made-r25-billion-in-one-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/880689\/south-african-who-grew-up-barefoot-with-no-water-and-electricity-and-built-an-iconic-app-that-made-r25-billion-in-one-year\/","title":{"rendered":"South African who grew up barefoot with no water and electricity, and built an iconic app that made R25 billion in one year\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Vutlharhi \u201cDonald\u201d Valoyi grew up barefoot in a rural village in Limpopo without electricity or piped water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, he is the founder of Zulzi, the technology company that helped build Checkers Sixty60, which generated R25.5 billion in sales for Shoprite in the 2026 financial year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Valoyi grew up in Ntshuxi village near Giyani in Limpopo and began his journey with the ambition to become an engineer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf I recall back then, we didn\u2019t even have electricity. We didn\u2019t have water. It was standard in a lot of villages, you go to a river to try to get some water,\u201d he said in an interview with Startup Club ZA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One early example of his resourcefulness came in primary school, when he lost his textbooks and built and sold three toy cars to raise R10 to replace them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His ambitions also came from the importance of mining in Limpopo, which encouraged him to pursue engineering. However, a shortage of teachers meant higher-grade mathematics was not available at his school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was very clear that with students in grade 12, there was just no maths at a higher grade. I had to do my own research, ask around, and to me, it became clear that I was facing a massive challenge,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because of this, Valoyi spent his December holiday working through the mathematics syllabus and past examination papers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t have to wait for January because, funny enough, our teacher at the time didn\u2019t even teach higher-grade maths. I had studied the whole syllabus by the time the school reopened,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following school, he enrolled at the University of the Witwatersrand in 2004 and graduated in 2007 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Mathematics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Valoyi subsequently worked as a software engineer and Java developer before moving into technical leadership at First National Bank in 2011.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The beginning of Zulzi <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 2013, he left to launch Zulzi, initially an e-commerce platform targeting students with books and electronics delivered within an hour or less. \u201cThat\u2019s when the idea of starting an on-demand delivery platform started,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The business eventually evolved into an online convenience store, but a major opportunity emerged when Shoprite began looking for technology solutions to strengthen its grocery delivery capabilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Valoyi said Checkers took an interest in Zulzi because the retailer was looking for systems that could address complex operational challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe started to chat to them when they realised that we could build world-class systems that address some of their complex problems,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The partnership began in 2018, with Zulzi helping develop the technology behind Sixty60 before the service launched in November 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zulzi built the original customer-facing app, store-facing application, operational dashboards, order-allocation engine, and integrations with SAP point-of-sale systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Sixty60 was developed in-house by Shoprite’s digital innovation hub, ShopriteX, it was heavily supported by external software development partners, including Zulzi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cZulzi plays a major role in maintaining Sixty60, with over 34 engineers, project managers, and quality assurance coming from us,\u201d the company previously said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The service’s subsequent growth has helped transform Shoprite’s business, with the Covid-19 pandemic accelerating demand for grocery deliveries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, its success also took years of investment in technology, logistics, and digital retail capabilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Shoprite’s 2026 financial results, Sixty60 generated R25.5 billion in sales, up 34.7% year on year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The platform accounted for 11.1% of the group’s Supermarkets RSA sales, illustrating how online shopping has become a significant part of its retail operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSixty60 has been a huge success and an example of what we can do when we work together,\u201d Valoyi said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zulzi has continued operating its own delivery service. In August 2024, it told MyBroadband that it was processing more than 5,000 orders a day through its dark stores in Johannesburg North, Pretoria and Centurion, with 300 drivers on its network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company said it was growing by 80% year-on-year and had an average delivery time of 17 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vutlharhi \u201cDonald\u201d Valoyi grew up barefoot in a rural village in Limpopo without electricity or piped water. Today, he is the founder of Zulzi, the technology company that helped build Checkers Sixty60.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":880700,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"posted","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"2113288279667704258","_sma_facebook_post_id":"191437357620492_2245601109593621","_sma_instagram_post_id":"18572497375079909","_sma_x_attempts":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[5223,7520,17414,853,26869],"class_list":["post-880689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-checkers","tag-shoprite","tag-sixty60","tag-south-africa","tag-zulzi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=880689"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":881080,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880689\/revisions\/881080"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/880700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=880689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=880689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=880689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}