Sashenthren

South African technology and local expertise combine to create better connections between customers and service professionals Artificial Intelligence continues to reshape industries around the world, from customer service and online shopping to recruitment and digital marketing. South Africa's online services sector is no exception, with AI increasingly being used to help customers find the right businesses faster and more efficiently. As one of South Africa's leading online services marketplaces, Snupit has been leveraging AI-powered technology for years to improve how customers connect with trusted local service professionals. While many companies are only now beginning to explore the potential of AI, Snupit's technology journey began when the company evolved from an online directory into an online services marketplace in 2017. Technology Built Around South African Needs Unlike global platforms that rely on international datasets and broad assumptions, Snupit's approach is built around the unique characteristics of the South African market. South Africa's service economy is diverse, with customer needs varying significantly between regions, cities, and communities. Understanding local search behaviour, popular service categories, seasonal demand patterns, and regional preferences is critical to creating meaningful connections between customers and service providers. By using technology designed specifically for the local market, Snupit is able to better understand customer requirements and connect them with the most relevant service professionals. "Technology is a powerful tool, but it works best when it understands the people it's serving," says Mithundra Sivenandan, Snupit's Sales & Marketing Manager. "South African customers have unique needs, and local businesses operate in a unique environment. That local understanding remains incredibly important." Smarter Connections Through AI One of the key advantages of AI within an …

Amidst South Africa's dynamic service sector, Snupit stands out as a leading online marketplace app, seamlessly linking customers to local service professionals. Collectively, businesses on Snupit have been able to generate over 1 billion rand through the platform, a testament to its effectiveness in driving business growth and sustainability. Businesses that have mastered the art of using Snupit witness monthly revenues surpassing R100 000. It all comes down to having a complete profile on the platform with positive customer reviews and testimonials. What began as a humble business directory has transformed into South Africa's premier online service marketplace, boasting over 500 000 business registrations in a range of industries: home improvements, finance, cleaning, catering and more. As South Africa’s 1st online marketplace, Snupit is celebrating its 12th year of operation. The platform revolutionised the way services are sought and provided, but has also become a catalyst for economic empowerment. Business owners have a legitimate platform to build their customer base. In addition, your everyday South African can find credible service professionals. Mithundra Sivenandan, Sales & Marketing Manager at Snupit, affirms: “Snupit plans to further assist businesses struggling to get access to new customers and markets with a multitude of new innovations and initiatives to be launched in 2024. The goal is to make it easier for smaller businesses to survive in this fragile economy. There has been no other online service marketplace operating within the borders of South Africa that has been able to contribute this much to the economy with independent ownership and without funding. This speaks volumes for the amount of hard work and dedication put into this project to create employment and assist businesses in tough economic times.” Snupit's journey from its inception to becoming South Africa's leading online marketplace is a testament to its …

A renowned online marketplace is marking a huge anniversary this year, having reached their ten year milestone of helping customers across South Africa find and hire service professionals. Snupit is an online directory of service professionals, and acts as a base for customers to quickly search and receive quotes from handymen, plumbers, solar system experts, gardeners, air-conditioning installers, security companies and more. Established in 2012, the South African business is now marking a huge 10-year anniversary by reflecting on its success throughout the last decade. Headquartered in KwaZulu-Natal, Snupit has come a long way since its launch in 2012, and throughout the last ten years, the company has built an honest and transparent platform based on loyalty and great customer service. Today, customers can search for assistance and quotes online, or via their mobile app, making it easier than ever to find trusted working professionals throughout South Africa. “The Snupit platform was the first ever online marketplace brought to market to connect customers with local service professionals,” says Mithundra Sivenandan, Sales & Marketing Manager, at Snupit. “Our platform today uses a number of automated software tools, bots and AI, which has been put to the best commercial use. Now, the business connects thousands of people with professionals across both the website and the app, saving people time and money. It’s been an incredible ten years at Snupit, and we can’t wait to see where the next ten years’ takes us.” While Snupit employs and values the use of modern and contemporary technology to ensure the platform is as effective as possible, the company is also impacting the community in several physical ways. “Snupit continues to contribute to the South African workforce, and we’re constantly working to employ youth members within the company, in order to help our cities, provinces and the country reduce the high unemployment rates,” says …

Helping businesses and customers, one challenge at a time When COVID-19 restrictions imposed a gloomy outlook for South African businesses, Snupit’s growth has shown no signs of slowing down. The company’s growth has had a steady upward trajectory, recruiting more ‘Pros’ on the platform, and hitting its 2 million customer requests milestone. South Africa’s leading online marketplace, Snupit connects customers to thousands of local professionals. The platform was founded by Avinash Samlall when he was unable to find service providers online. Once he identified the gap, it was not long before he set up the platform for local South African businesses. The customer-centric focus, recruiting the best providers in the business and an insightful understanding of the marketplace has catapulted Snupit as one of the leading online platforms of the country. Mithundra Sivenandan, Snupit’s Sales & Marketing Manager stated, “We’re the best in the business, not only because we know the market well, but because we are the market.” This claim is hard to dismiss, especially when the platform has over 350,000 businesses registered across 600+ categories. The company also boasts of serving over a million customers each month through their online directory and call centre. As of September, Snupit has hit the two million milestone in customer requests posted by customers through their website and mobile apps. Snupit continues to show positive signs and growth during the COVID pandemic and seeing an influx of new businesses and service professionals signing up due to the COVID pandemic. The platform also saw regular increase and decrease of customer requests for different service categories based on the COVID pandemic and lockdown restrictions. With over 90% success rates for customers requesting quotes, finding and hiring service professionals, Snupit has seen a huge increase in return/repeat customers. Approaching crucial periods for 2021 such as Black Friday and …

Snupit goes global by launching services in India. South Africa’s leading online platform connecting locals with professionals and businesses is proud to announce its international expansion in 2020. Snupit is now operating in India. Their new website for India can be accessed at www.snupit.com. Avinash Samlall, Snupit’s Founder and CEO, commented on this, “We’re both very proud and super excited about this. It’s a perfect way to start 2020. India is the fifth biggest economy in the world. The country offers some amazing opportunities and we’re looking forward to making the most of them. India is bustling with professionals, freelancers and small businesses and we believe there’s also a solid demand for their skills. Snupit is in the perfect position to connect these two.” While for its first, South Africa based website their domain was www.snupit.co.za, the company has gone with the .com TLD for simplicity. Users can visit Snupit India by going to www.snupit.com. Currently Snupit India is offering its services in the following states: • Ahmedabad • Bengaluru • Chennai • Dehli • Hyderabad • Kolkata • Mumbai • Pune More states will be added as Snupit reviews the response it’s getting from existing territories. Mr. Samlall added, “We’re already getting great feedback from users about how people are using Snupit in India. You can see some of these success stories we have published on our new site. One user who wanted a building contractor posted a job at night, and woke up to find several pros had responded. This is the power and simplicity of Snupit and we’re confident that it’ll be a big success in India.” This expansion is one of the biggest news for the company, despite Snupit has been very busy with numerous initiatives and celebrated several milestones. For instance, just a few months ago in October 2019, Snupit completed a million requests on its platform. And earlier the same year, the company had introduced the Snupit Elite Pro …

Study shows 90% SMEs buckling in a weak economy. Snupit shows its powerful support to local businesses. A recent study done by Retail Capital, a financial services company, revealed that South Africa’s small businesses are struggling under current economic conditions. The combination of a low-growth economy, increasing operating costs and unreliable utilities is dealing a heavy blow to the SMEs. Snupit, South Africa’s leading online platform for finding local professionals, is proud to play an important role to helps SMEs in such trying times. Avinash Samlall, Snupit’s Founder and CEO, commented, “One thing I can say from experience as an engineer and an entrepreneur is that while economic conditions may change over time, the role and importance of technology will continue to increase. In fact, SMEs use the right technologies and platforms to outsmart and outperform bigger competitors all the time. It’s about recognizing your strengths, among which are agility and personable service for smaller players. And Snupit helps them make the most of these two qualities unique to SMEs.” Since most SMEs aren’t bigger than a three-person crew, updating the business technology-wise isn't a priority for them. These understaffed units are too bogged down with the operational grind work. And this compounds the adverse effects of a tough economy on the business. According to the study, 13% of affected SME employees start a side hustle to supplement their income. This is often done by identifying a gap in the market, usually in niche industries. Snupit is an excellent platform to do this as well. So the platform helps an intimate SME family in multiple ways; Not only giving the business a chance to do better, but helping its individual members a build a supplementary income while things at their company get back on track. Mr. Samlall added, “Moving forward, professionals and businesses, especially SMEs will need to prioritize the use of technology. And we’re proud to …

A million requests, a million problems solved Snupit, South Africa’s leading online platform for finding local professionals, announces that over 1,000,000 customer requests have been posted on their platform. Avinash Samlall, Snupit’s Founder and CEO, commented, “If you go to the (Snupit) website, you can see the simple message ‘Find local professionals for just about anything’ on the home page. This basically summarizes what Snupit is about. Clearly, this message has resonated with a lot of people. A million times people have requested to find a local professional through our system. And that’s because we’ve worked hard to build a very smooth process and effective system. One that maintains the simplicity of Snupit’s core and focuses on the needs of the users.” Snupit owes its conceptualization to a frustrating experience its CEO Mr. Samlall had when he was looking for a local service provider online without any luck. The company has come a long way in providing the most hassle-free solution to help South African locals find the best professional for their job. The million requests being celebrated by the company span across more than 600 service categories. Over the years Snupit has continued to enhance and optimize its user experience to ensure the company remains the top choice for South Africans. Conducting surveys, taking part in national business shows, improving trust & security features are some examples of how Snupit stays ahead of the curve. In the wake of reaching 1,000,000 customer requests, the company is gearing towards reaching twice this number of requests. Mr. Samlall further commented on Snupit’s milestone and next goal, “This is an incredible accomplishment which has been achieved over a two and a half year period. Our target is to now reach 2 million requests over the next 12 months or sooner. We have optimized our user experience on our site and mobile apps to ensure that customers can quickly and easily find what they are …

In a span of seven years, Snupit has become South Africa's leading online marketplace. Connecting the country's best professionals to locals, Snupit enters 2019 with even more to offer its users. Snupit's Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder Avinash Samlall commented on the continued success of Snupit: "We consider Snupit to be a personal assistant that helps people find the best professional for a project within minutes. And vice versa for pros and businesses, getting them more jobs in less time. Naturally, we want to make that personal assistant to be as smart and efficient as possible." To that end, numerous technology improvements have been made to improve the online service platform. For instance, a wizard-style question-and-answer section has been implemented. This simplifies the way users post requests for quotes. The improved simplicity and better user experience is expected to increase user retention and drive growth of the user base. Samlall also remarked: "At Snupit, we're here to help you kick off the new year right. We understand that it's not easy to run a small business, and we're always making improvements to help you grow your business quickly on Snupit." For the pros, Snupit is a quality lead generation system. For users, it is an efficient way to hire the best person for the job. For both types of users, Snupit's utility translates into a better quality of life. Overall, the online platform contributes positively to the country's economy. All these are important metrics for success and they paint a win-win picture for Snupit and all those who use it, especially considering that small businesses are the backbone of any economy. With each passing year, governments and corporations are judged to a great extent by their performance related to creating jobs and improving the economy. As 2019 kicks off, Snupit is both proud and optimistic about the role it has played and will continue to play in this respect. Snupit connects over 2 …