We build for the shop that has to open tomorrow
Tengar is the trading name of Sefume Enterprises (PTY)LTD, a South African technology company. We build the digital layer that independent trade in this country has never had — and we build it for the hardware, connectivity and working conditions that actually exist.
Engineers and operators from the market we build for
This is not a thesis. The people building Tengar have spent time inside the informal trade — buying stock, reconciling a ledger on paper, losing a sale to a stock-out, trying to settle with a wholesaler across three channels of bank detail. THENGA exists because that arithmetic is painful and it does not improve by itself.
We are a South African company, not a global platform looking for an African market. The products, the payment rails, the delivery economics and the compliance pathways are all built here, for here.
Leadership
William Sefume
Founder & Lead Engineer
Architecture and product. Responsible for the offline-first data layer that makes the platform usable on a two-bar connection.
Ralodi Peloeagae
Founder & Chief Operating Officer
Operations and partnerships. Responsible for wholesaler and municipal relationships, pilot corridors and the funding pathway.
Four positions we will not trade away
Offline is not a failure state
For most of this market, offline is the normal operating condition. A platform that stops working when the signal drops is a platform for a different country. Local-first storage is an architectural commitment, not a feature.
Published numbers, labelled assumptions
We publish the source of every figure we quote, and we label our own projections as projections. A market this attractive attracts invented precision; we would rather show our working.
Through the wholesaler, never around them
95% of surveyed independent traders buy from wholesalers. Disintermediating the node that holds the supply information would be a faster demo and a worse business. We onboard retailers with their wholesaler.
Honest about what we are not
KasieConnect is a connectivity service, not a bank. ZArka is a settlement rail, not a savings product. Nothing we build should be mistaken for a deposit product or investment advice.
Shipped, verified, and used on real data
THENGA is a working platform, not a prototype. It runs as a progressive web app and an Android application, holding its own offline database, syncing to the cloud when connectivity allows, and degrading predictably when it does not.
- Seven product surfaces: retailer, wholesaler, driver, drop-taxi, consumer, admin and public sector
- Live catalogue with per-wholesaler stock, visible to retailers
- Order lifecycle from basket to dispatch to QR-verified delivery
- Compliance tracking aligned to real funding-programme criteria
- Messaging built in, because WhatsApp is how this market already works
Pilot mode, deliberately
We are running an 18-month pilot in a defined corridor with a defined cohort — not claiming national scale. We publish our break-even arithmetic (roughly 821 active retailers, or ~631 at a 30% higher basket) because a pilot with no stated denominator is just marketing.
We are seeking a single facility to fund that pilot, with growth released against milestones rather than promised on a slide.
Let's talk about your side of the trade
Retailer, wholesaler, driver, municipality or funder — start wherever you are.