South African startup TuYu is claiming to be the “pioneer” in the country’s mobile corporate reward and incentive industry, having developed an all-encompassing solution to fit a variety of needs and budgets.
TuYu’s aim is to allow its clients to receive and redeem rewards in a secure and convenient manner by using their mobile phones.
The company can run a number of different programmes, including staff rewards, incentives, one-off vouchers, airtime rewards, insurance payouts, mystery shopping payouts and expense management.
Managing director (MD) Ruan Geyser told HumanIPO the company’s goal is to transform the South African reward, incentive and expense management market and allow everyone to benefit from its programmes.
“We offer a turnkey service, offering companies innovative mobile solutions, tailored to their specific needs with flexibility, superior reporting advantages, and reliability,” he said.
“Our thorough understanding of the South African prepaid industry has allowed us to develop all encompassing solutions that will fit any need and budget. Our mobile solutions alleviate all existing logistical, accessibility and resource intensive issues the current market is facing.”
TuYu’s distribution channels include SMS, MMS and mobile wallets, through which the company sends a unique wiCode to a mobile phone which can then be used by customers to pay at a Point of Sale, perform multiple transactions or purchase airtime.
It is also planning on launching mobile apps in the first half of this year.
“We pride ourselves in offering our clients flexible solutions, allowing them to dictate how they would like to structure their campaigns,” Geyser said.
Formed towards the end of last year, TuYu is based on Geyser’s belief there has been a “sharp increase” in demand for staff reward programmes.
“We followed this particular market and its trends for quite some time, before we saw the gap in the market. All existing staff reward and incentive companies run their programmes and payouts on cards, which not only has a high setup cost, but can be a logistical headache when you have staff spread across South Africa,” he said. “We thought that by removing cards from the equation, we’d be able to reach a wider audience by utilising mobile phones, and mobile transacting, and this led us to starting the development of our platform.”
The company secured initial funding from within South Africa, and has recently finished initial development. TuYu’s biggest live client Justine Cosmetics has in excess of 20,000 employees.
