Telkom’s newly-launched Yep online marketplace for SMEs has raked in 500 000 customers less than a month after going live.
This is according to Lunga Siyo, CEO of Telkom Business, in an e-mail interview with ITWeb.
The company announced the launch of its latest innovation, Yep, on Google Play and Apple’s app store, last month.
Telkom describes Yep as a digital marketplace where customers can search and purchase from small businesses.
It says the app is geared towards economic sustainability, creating a long-term future for small businesses.
Users can locate businesses or services they require in their area, request quotes, directly book appointments from the app, view the store online, and review its ratings.
Users can also create their own online store with their own unique branding and upload their list of services to find new customers.
“Yep already has over 500 000 customers (service providers) and we are looking at increasing this number significantly,” says Siyo.
“We’ve had an overwhelming response from the market, with many customers requesting to be onboarded on the platform already.”
With Yep, Telkom transformed its 70-year-old Yellow Pages business into an online marketplace targeting SMEs.
Siyo explains that the Yellow Pages business was an online and print directory where companies could list their business and services they offer.
“Now we have taken our online listings business on Yellow Pages and evolved it into an online e-commerce marketplace that allows SMEs to list their business, open an online store, buy and sell services and bid for work opportunities posted by corporates and other business online.”
He notes the decline of the print industry has been the biggest challenge that most print businesses like Yellow Pages faced.
“That forced us to rethink how we do business and hence we decided to introduce Yep. Also, the consumer journey to discovering any products or services starts online and we also needed to quickly strengthen our digital proposition for our customers.”
According to Siyo, Telkom is investing a significant amount of money to increase users on the platform and help grow SMEs.
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