Takealot

Takealot is South Africa's dominant e-commerce platform, and its success is a textbook case of K-selection strategy in a market where competitors chose r-selection and lost. While Jumia spread thin across 14 African countries, Takealot invested deeply in a single market. Owned by Naspers (now Prosus), the company built its own logistics network, launched Mr D Food for delivery, and developed payment systems calibrated to South African consumer behavior. The result: market leadership in the continent's most developed e-commerce economy.

The biological parallel is precise. K-selected species invest heavily in fewer offspring, providing each with the resources to survive. Takealot treated South Africa as its single offspring - building warehouses, last-mile delivery capacity, and customer trust over years rather than racing to plant flags across the continent. This niche construction created barriers that pan-African competitors couldn't replicate with their spread-thin approach. Jumia's pan-African ambition was r-selection: many markets, minimal investment per market, hoping some would survive. Takealot bet that one deeply-served market beats fourteen shallow ones. The infrastructure moat - particularly the Mr D Food logistics network - now serves as an ecosystem that new entrants must either match or avoid entirely.