Donald Valoyi’s journey from Limpopo to the technology behind Checkers Sixty60

Zulzi started as an online shopping business. Its work with Shoprite would later put the company behind parts of the technology powering one of South Africa’s biggest grocery delivery services. Before Checkers Sixty60 became a familiar way for South Africans to order groceries, Donald Valoyi was already working on a different problem: how to get products to customers quickly after they ordered online.

Valoyi, whose full name is Vutlharhi “Donald” Valoyi, founded Zulzi in 2013. The company initially focused on delivering textbooks and electronics, but its technology work eventually took it into grocery retail through a partnership with Shoprite. Sixty60 generated R25.5 billion in sales in Shoprite’s 2026 financial year, according to figures reported by BusinessTech. That is the scale of the business connected to a platform that Zulzi helped develop.

Valoyi’s route into technology began in Ntshuxi village near Giyani in Limpopo, where he grew up without electricity or piped water. His path from there to running a technology company involved a university degree, several years in software development and a decision to leave employment to build his own business.

From software developer to business owner

Valoyi studied Applied Mathematics at the University of the Witwatersrand, graduating in 2007. Before starting Zulzi, he worked as a software engineer and Java developer, then joined First National Bank as a technical team lead in 2011. Those roles gave him experience working with software used in business operations. In 2013, he left his job to start Zulzi.

The company’s initial focus was online shopping for students, particularly textbooks and electronics, with delivery in an hour or less. Getting an order from a website to a customer sounds simple until the business has to do it repeatedly. Products need to be available, orders must reach the right people and deliveries have to happen within the promised time. That was the kind of operating problem Zulzi was working on before its involvement with Checkers.

The work behind a grocery delivery app

Shoprite began engaging with Zulzi in 2018 as it developed its online grocery offering for Checkers. Zulzi helped build parts of the original Sixty60 platform, including the customer app, store application, operational dashboards and systems for allocating orders. Shoprite’s own digital innovation team, ShopriteX, also played a central role in developing the service. Checkers Sixty60 launched in November 2019.

The technology had to do more than let customers browse groceries and press a button. Once an order came in, store staff needed to pick the products, the system had to track the order, and a driver had to collect and deliver it. Grocery shopping also creates problems that are less common with some other online purchases. A customer might order ten items, only for one to be unavailable when the order is picked. The retailer then needs to deal with the missing product without holding up everything else. At a small scale, staff might manage this manually. Across a large retail operation, the systems have to handle thousands of orders and keep the process organised.

R25.5 billion in sales puts the scale into perspective

Shoprite’s reported R25.5 billion in Sixty60 sales for the financial year ended June 2026 shows how important online grocery shopping has become to the retailer. The figure belongs to Shoprite’s business, not Zulzi. Zulzi’s contribution was helping develop parts of the technology behind the service, alongside Shoprite’s teams. The distinction matters because a successful delivery platform depends on more than software. Shoprite brings its supermarket network, stock, suppliers and retail operations to the business. The technology connects customers to those resources and helps coordinate fulfilment.

As order volumes increase, the work does not end with getting more people to use the app. The retailer must also manage picking times, product availability, delivery capacity and the cost of fulfilling orders. For customers, these details may only become noticeable when an order arrives late or an item is missing. For the business, they are part of the daily work required to keep the service running.

Zulzi has its own delivery operation

Valoyi has continued building Zulzi beyond its work with Checkers. In 2024, the company told MyBroadband it was processing more than 5,000 orders a day through its dark stores in Johannesburg North, Pretoria and Centurion. It also reported having 300 drivers on its network at the time.

Running its own delivery service gives Zulzi a different set of responsibilities from those involved in developing technology for a large retailer. It has to attract customers, organise orders, manage drivers and cover the costs of getting products to people's doors. That is a difficult business to run. Delivery fees and order volumes have to support the costs of staff, logistics and daily operations. A service can be popular with customers and still face pressure on its margins if each delivery costs too much. Zulzi therefore operates in two related areas: providing its own on-demand delivery service and applying its technology experience to the wider retail market.

What other startups can take from the deal

For South African technology companies, Zulzi’s work with Shoprite offers an example of how a startup can contribute to a much larger business without owning the entire service. The opportunity came from solving a specific problem: managing online orders and getting them fulfilled quickly. Shoprite had the stores and retail infrastructure, while Zulzi brought experience in building on-demand technology.

Working with a large corporate customer, however, brings its own demands. The product must fit existing systems, handle real operating conditions and keep working as demand grows. A startup also needs to manage the commercial side of the relationship, including the resources required to deliver the work. Valoyi’s story is not simply about building an app that became popular. It is about a technology business finding a role in a large retailer’s operations and continuing to develop its own service. Sixty60’s sales show the size of the retail business that has grown around online grocery shopping. Zulzi’s involvement illustrates the role local technology companies can play in helping established businesses move into new ways of serving customers.