Massmart has and continues to invest significantly in eCommerce as a strategic growth vector.

This initiative has been supported by Walmart, including through the services of approximately 300 full-time Massmart technologists based in Walmart’s Tech Development Centre in Bangalore and the three-year secondment to Massmart of Sylvester John from Walmart US, where he was responsible for last mile delivery.

Under Sylvester’s leadership Massmart accelerated and fully overhauled its online shopping experiences across Makro, Game and Builders. This included building a native Makro shopping app; launching a bespoke Makro B2B website; acquiring critical capabilities through purchasing OneCart and Wumdrop and implementing a reliable next-day pickup option while reducing Makro and Game customer delivery lead times from 7 days, to our present position where over 85% of online orders are delivered within 2 days.

Sylvester’s three-year secondment has now ended and we are delighted to announce that he has been succeeded in the role of Massmart Senior Vice President for Group eCommerce by Srividya Pandya, with effect from 1 November 2023. Srividya’s previous roles at Walmart have included leading the acceleration of its global omnichannel efforts and serving as Vice President of Strategic Integration for Walmart US. Prior to joining Walmart, Srividya’s career experience spanned a range of consulting and eCommerce organisations, including Amazon.

Commenting about the leadership succession process, Massmart CEO Jonathan Molapo said “We are exceptionally fortunate to have access to Walmart’s global retail talent pool and this has been especially evident in the eCommerce area where we continue to be supported by Walmart resulting in exponential improvement of our group-wide ecommerce capability.”