Takealot crushes Amazon, Temu, and Shein

Google Search Trends data for the past year suggest that Takealot’s dominance in South Africa is not seriously threatened by players like Amazon, Temu, and Shein.

Online searches for “Amazon” briefly surpassed searches for “Takealot” in May 2024. However, that was the month in which Amazon.co.za launched, and “Amazon” searches quickly plummeted thereafter.

MyBroadband compared Google Trends data on online searches for Amazon, Shein, Takealot, and Temu between April 2024 and April 2025.

In early April 2024, online searches for Takealot were trending well above Shein, Temu, and Takealot. However, Amazon.co.za launched on 7 May 2024, and searches for Amazon skyrocketed during that week.

During the week from 5 to 11 May 2024, searches for Amazon were more frequent than searches for Takealot, reaching 69 that week — 15 more than Takealot’s 54 searches.

Searches for Takealot markedly increased in the weeks that followed, climbing to 63 in the week from 19 to 25 May 2024.

Meanwhile, searches for Amazon, Temu, and Shein trended significantly lower in that week, reaching 28, 22, and 37 searches, respectively.

While Shein had been operating in South Africa for some time already, Temu launched in January 2024 and was incredibly popular among shoppers in the country due to its affordable prices.

Despite this, searches for Temu haven’t reached more than 31 in a single week between April 2024 and April 2025.

Another telling statistic is the number of search terms for each e-commerce platform during the week of Black Friday, from 24 to 30 November 2024.

The annual sales event takes place on the day after Thanksgiving in the US, which was 29 November last year.

The sales event marks the start of the Christmas shopping season. Retailers offer substantial discounts on products and extended operating hours to help shoppers make the most of their deals.

Takealot searches were the only ones that spiked significantly in the week of Black Friday 2024.

That week, searches for Takealot reached 100 — 72 more than for Amazon, 62 more than for Shein, and 77 more than Temu.

The chart below compares Google Search term trends for Amazon, Takealot, Temu, and Shein in South Africa over the past 12 months.

Takealot felt some pain from Temu and Amazon

Takealot owner Naspers’s financial results for the half-year ended September 2024 revealed that Amazon.co.za and Temu slowed the South African e-commerce giant’s growth.

Despite the pressures, it reported strong revenue and gross merchandise value (GMV) growth for the period.

“The business continues to face a slow-growing macroeconomic environment and increased competition from new entrants such as Temu and Amazon impacting Takealot group’s growth, which was 11% revenue growth and GMV growth of 11%, excluding Superbalist,” Naspers said.

GMV climbed to R746 million during the period, up from R654 during the same period in 2023. Naspers said Takealot continues to gain market share in the general merchandise sector.

Despite this, Naspers said the e-commerce business focused on defending its market share during the reporting period while adapting to changes in shopping patterns post-load-shedding.

One of the ways in which Takealot prepared for the threat posed by Amazon.co.za was launching TakealotMore, which offers similar benefits to Amazon’s Prime membership, in the week that Amazon.co.za launched.

However, it should be noted that Amazon has yet to offer its full Prime service to South African marketplace shoppers.

Much like Prime, TakealotMore offers free deliveries and collections for orders, among other benefits.

“This groundbreaking subscription service offers millions of South Africans exclusive monthly benefits to eliminate delivery costs and enhance shopping convenience,” Takealot said.

“The subscription service offers fast, free delivery and collect options on Takealot.”