SweepSouth, the online home-cleaning platform, is sweeping west with its distinct offering. It is launching in Nigeria this month, with Ghana next in its sights.
Founded in 2014 by Aisha Pandor and Alen Ribic, SweepSouth connects home cleaners with clients. This month it will officially launch its mobile platform in Lagos, Nigeria, after months of testing. In the past year, SweepSouth established operations in Kenya and Egypt, where it bought Filkhedma, a start-up home services marketplace operating across three cities and providing cleaning, maintenance and beauty services.
SweepSouth COO Luke Kannemeyer said the company has created nodes in key markets on the continent and the next phase will be the rollout in more cities in countries where it already has a presence, and in neighbouring countries.
“We have a pan-African strategy that aims to provide dignified work opportunities across emerging and informal markets. Our first point is to establish nodes in key regions of East Africa (in Kenya), North Africa (Egypt) and West Africa (Nigeria). This is essentially where we landed now, and over the next six months we are looking at expanding out of those nodes into other cities and also neighbouring countries,” he said.
We expect to grow out of the nodes we have established and within the next one to two years we will see ourselves being in more countries in Southern Africa
— Luke Kannemeyer, SweepSouth COO
In North Africa, it will look for opportunities in Morocco and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East. Similarly, in Nigeria, it will use its presence there to set up operations in other West African countries.
“Within the next year or so, Ghana will be the next logical economy to expand into. But we don't want to just expand at all costs. We make sure that we understand the market and don't assume that markets are the same,” he said.
In 2019 SweepSouth received R30m funding from Naspers’ venture capital unit Foundry. The cash injection has helped fast-track its expansion.
“As with any company in an early stage of development, we are highly reliant on investment capital to realise growth opportunities we want to pursue. With the income capital we are able to take greater risks. Also, if you are better funded, you can be more ambitious,” Kannemeyer said.
Expansion in more countries in Southern Africa is still on the cards but Kannemeyer said, “For us it's about figuring out the right model to employ in other countries in the region. If you look at Cairo and Lagos they have large populations running into about 35-million [in total], so then coming back to the Southern African community, there are cities that are much smaller and much less dense.”
Though the region hasn’t been its priority, Kannemeyer said as part of SweepSouth’s pan-African strategy, “we expect to grow out of the nodes we have established and within the next one to two years we will see ourselves in more countries in Southern Africa”.
The company is entering a tough Nigerian market where a number of listed companies, mostly food and retail, have pulled out, citing challenges in bringing goods in, weak economic growth, and difficulty in repatriating money. Other companies such as MultiChoice and MTN are still operating despite increased regulatory pressures.
Kannemeyer said SweepSouth was aware of the challenges in Nigeria and has approached the market with a “degree of caution”. He said the trials in the past months have been successful and they were hoping to gain more traction when the mobile app platform goes live in the coming weeks.
Initially started as an online housecleaning platform, SweepSouth has added other services including gardening, plumbing and beauty; giving entrepreneurs in those fields the opportunity to list their services on the platform. In SA, it services more than 100,000 customers a month. In Kenya, where business was slow to take off, numbers are rapidly growing post-Covid and recently exceeded 1,000 customers a month.
According to Kannemeyer, in SA the cleaners are mainly mothers who support about five to six dependents. In Kenya and Nigeria it has seen more young tech-savvy people joining the platform as cleaners compared with SA and Egypt. There is also a male cohort joining after the introduction of outdoor services such as gardening. In Kenya “we are starting to see more male indoor cleaners joining the platform”, he said.
Kannemeyer said SweepSouth was exploring adding laundry to its services.
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