Invest

Build the retail media layer for Africa.

Retail media is the fastest-growing digital ad channel globally. In Africa, it is still nascent. RetailPlus is building the platform layer that turns retailers, audiences and surfaces into one network — starting in South Africa and scaling across the continent.

$155B

Global retail media spend, 2026e

21%

CAGR, retail media globally

<2%

Africa's share of that spend today

The global context

Every other region already built this.

Retail media networks are now the third major ad channel alongside search and social. Amazon runs a $50B+ media business, while global giants like Walmart, Tesco, and Alibaba launched theirs over the last decade. Africa has not.

United States

Mature · saturated

$62bn

2026e digital spend

China

Mature · platform-led

$54bn

Alibaba, JD, PDD-led

United Kingdom

Established · growing

£3.1bn

Tesco, Sainsbury's, Boots

Australia

Established · concentrated

A$1.8bn

Coles 360, Woolworths Cartology

Brazil

Emerging · growing fast

$520m

Mercado Libre, Magalu, GPA

South Africa

Nascent · platform forming

R 1.5bn

Largest market on the continent

Rest of Africa

Greenfield · pre-platform

~R 600m

Fragmented, retailer-by-retailer

Bar widths shown to a common scale. Figures illustrative, drawn from public industry estimates and operator filings.

Why Africa, why now

The market is here. The infrastructure is missing.

Retail media is not an e-commerce feature — it is a structural shift in how brands buy attention. As Amazon, Walmart and Tesco built media networks, brand spend moved from Meta and Google onto retailers. That shift is now starting in South Africa.

Clicks, Dis-Chem, Pick n Pay, Shoprite, Woolworths and Massmart hold the country's richest shopper data. Yoco, Stitch, Snipform, FirstAdvertising and major banks add payments, identity and behavioural signals. The pieces exist — but not yet as a unified platform.

RetailPlus is the platform layer: aggregating retailer inventory, partner data, creators, in-store activation and measurement into one network.

The investment is in the platform layer for Africa, starting in South Africa where the data, retailers and brands already exist, then extending into Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt and the broader continent where the same composition problem exists at a different scale.

South Africa has the bank-grade data, the retailer footprint, the loyalty programmes, the mobile penetration and the brand demand. What it does not have is a shared platform layer for them to plug into. We are building that layer.

7

Local retailers actively building media networks

+18%

Brand budgets shifting from search/social to retail media

2025

Third-party cookies functionally gone, first-party data wins

Live

POPIA cleanroom precedent now in place

+24%

Cross-border continental e-commerce growing

0

No platform-layer competitor at scale

How investors play

Three ways to participate, three returns profiles.

RetailPlus is not just an equity story. The most useful capital usually comes from organisations that also have a commercial role. We welcome investment from across the three sides of the platform.

Strategic customer

Retailers, banks, telcos

Invest as a strategic customer who will also run RetailPlus as your media platform. White-label it. Light up your network on your data and surfaces. Equity stake aligns the platform's incentives with yours over the long run.

  • Retailers (national grocers, pharmacy, specialty)
  • Banks running media programs for cardholders
  • Telcos with subscriber data and screen estate

Strategic supplier

Strategic supplier

Invest as a supplier whose capability sits inside the platform. Identity providers, creator networks, content publishers, agencies. Equity participation gives you category-defining distribution as the network scales.

  • Identity and cleanroom infrastructure
  • Creator networks and talent agencies
  • Publishers, content studios, audience licensors

Strategic partner

Adjacent service providers

Invest as a partner adjacent to the core stack. Payments, fintech, fulfillment, in-store activation, DOOH, gaming, insurance. Equity participation gives you presence on every brief that runs through the platform.

  • Payments and fintech
  • In-store activation, sampling, fulfillment
  • DOOH, gaming, alternative inventory
The investment case

What you are actually buying.

RetailPlus is infrastructure. It is the rails on which a multi-billion rand market category will run. The investment is in the rails, in the partner ecosystem we have already built around them, and in the distribution to every retailer and brand in South Africa.

Category-defining position

First and only platform layer aggregating retailers, brands, partners and creators in the same network in South Africa. The moat is the partner integrations, the commercial wiring and the cleanroom join, all of which take years to replicate.

Three-sided revenue

Retailers pay platform fees on their media revenue. Brands pay through the buying flow. Partners pay revenue share on usage. Three independent revenue streams against the same underlying transactions.

Defensible data composition

Bank-grade cleanroom, POS attribution and retailer loyalty all already integrated. The data composition is not the data itself, which is what makes it defensible. Owning the join, not the underlying data.

Continental playbook

South Africa is the starting point because the pieces exist. The platform is built so it ports cleanly into Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt and across the continent as those markets mature. Same architecture, local tenant configuration.

Foundation partners signed

Eleven foundation partners across audience, creators, attribution, content, payments and in-store activation are integrated and live. The ecosystem is not theoretical. The integration risk is already taken.

Operator team

Founding team has stood up retail media, run loyalty programmes and built creator and influencer commerce in the South African market. Repeat builders with category-specific scar tissue.

Tell us what you bring.

We read every application. If your capability slots cleanly into one of the six categories and there is a credible commercial case, we come back inside five working days with the next step.

  • Short technical scoping call
  • Commercial framework discussion
  • Cleanroom or platform sandbox access where relevant
  • Co-marketing on the live partner roster once signed