SA e-commerce platform Shopstar, secures further funding, sets sights on scale
Summary
South African e-commerce platform Shopstar has secured third round funding as it begins the next phase in its strategy to scale.Founded in 2014, Shopstar is a cloud-based e-commerce platform that enables local entrepreneurs to build online stores and grow their businesses by offering easy to use, professional services.After assessing the business potential in late 2018, seasoned entrepreneur and investor Mike Joubert started a second round of investment and became its majority shareholder, beginning its turnaround strategy and starting scaling it for growth.What sets Shopstar apart from other e-commerce offerings is that its entire purpose is focused on helping South African entrepreneurs launch and grow their businesses, and make sales. This sets it apart from the bigger international platforms we have a passionate belief in making South Africa a better place by growing the South African entrepreneurial ecosystem, Joubert said.The business has now secured further funding from Launch Africa Ventures, which has provided early-stage investment for over 60 high-potential African tech startups so far.We saw potential right from the get-go with Shopstar. You can get an online shop started in five easy steps, in under 10 minutes and with no coding knowledge or design experience required, Edington said.It means its incredibly democratic now, any entrepreneur, whatever stage of their journey they are on, is able to open their business up to endless possibilities and audiences. We have just introduced Shopstar Boost, which offers a suite of services aimed at getting our customers up and operating with professional stores in no time. This includes store design, graphic design such as logos, getting started on social media and copywriting essentially bridging the gap between SMEs and the marketing agency services they often cant afford, he said.We were also first to offer South African dropshipping, which allows customers to build their own shop and sell products from hundreds of other small businesses essentially a risk-free way of getting started quickly.