Best South African App for 2020 is BOTTLES

The annual MTN Business App of the Year Awards, which took place virtually last month for the first time, celebrates the very best of South Africa’s app development talent. The winner of the Best South African Solution for 2020 is BOTTLES, an app that provides a delivery service not only for your groceries, but also for your favourite alcoholic beverages.

“The app was initially developed to deliver alcohol conveniently to your home. In March 2020, we pivoted to same-day delivery of grocery essentials as alcohol was banned, and South Africans needed a means of getting groceries delivered to their home to be safe,” says Ianthe Sandnes, Marketing and Partnerships Manager at BOTTLES.

Winner of the People’s Choice award at last year’s MTN Business App of the Year Awards, this solution has grown from strength to strength.

“The response from our customers has been overwhelmingly positive, with us earning over 180k new registered users and seeing growth of over 400%,” he says.

“As the first on-demand shopping app in South Africa, we have nearly 5 years’ experience in on-demand and keeping our clients happy. With our exclusive partnership with Pick n Pay, we offer same-day delivery of over 7 000 Pick n Pay products to South Africans across the country and are continuously evolving the app to meet the requirements of our users. We are also the highest rated app in the grocery and liquor space in SA, showing our focus on customer service,” Sandnes says.

Award entries in this category were all judged according to strict criteria, assessing whether this application was either exclusively South African or one that solves a uniquely South African challenge.

Category sponsor of Best Consumer Solution this year is Syngenta, one of the world’s leading agriculture companies.

“We are excited to see the huge potential of South African app developers and hope that these awards inspire others to look at unique ways of solving industry problems. By sponsoring the Best South African Solution, we hope to raise awareness on the need for apps across various sectors, from retail to agricultural, to simplify business. At Syngenta, digital innovation is a large portion of our business in the pursuit of farming smarter, producing food to feed the world, in a way that is sustainable for the future. We need well thought out, strong applications to help South African farmers thrive,” says Tyla Rogers, Digital Lead for Syngenta South Africa.

This year saw an unprecedented 726 entries into these awards, 179 of which were apps submitted for Best South African solution, the most entries in any of the categories.

“It is a huge accolade and a testament to the hard work and dedication of each employee to the business. It was also a humbling thought to have been able to not only provide South Africa a means of keeping safe during these unprecedented times, but also to have been in a position to provide new jobs within both Bottles and our driver partners,” Sandnes says.

What is next for BOTTLES? “We have recently been acquired by Pick n Pay, and we are very excited for the future of e-commerce and what we can do together. Our aim is to have a business which customers can access anytime, anywhere and from any place, to offer more products / services and more flexibility to customers in this rapidly growing area,” says Sandnes.

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