Lakheni the start up that helps poor people buy in bulk
Presenting Lakheni, a South African initiative that uses group buying power to lower food prices for needy communities, using a mobile app.
We all know that buying in bulk can lead to great savings. However, lower-income earners (who often live a long way from grocery stores), do not have the means to purchase items in large quantities. On top fo that, they also have to face the cost of travel to the grocery stores. To counter this, Nokwethu Khojane and her business partner, Lauren Drake, founded Lakheni, a social enterprise, that aggregates low-income households into buying groups. It also provides a means for day care centres to generate income.
How does it work ?
Every month, Lakheni takes bulk orders for staples such as maize, sugar and oil through local day care centres. Customers deposit their payments into a bank account that Lakheni uses to order in bulk from suppliers.
The orders are delivered to the day care centres, which earn a fee for processing the communities’ orders, or to spaza shops (local market retailers), which also benefit from Lakheni’s bulk ordering. Using the system saves customers about 30%, including the savings on transport.
This year, Khojane and the Lakheni app have been nominated to the Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA) alongside nine other African innovators.
Sources: Brand South Africa & How we made it in Africa
