How Khathutshelo Mufamadi Quit His Engineering Job & Founded Droppa

Launched in 2016, Droppa is the brainchild of a 34-year-old founder and director, Khathutshelo Mufamadi. The company is an on demand mobile platform for house and furniture removals.

Like most e-hailing companies, Droppa doesn’t own bakkies nor trucks, it is just a delivery platform that connects clients to drivers. This makes it easy, convenient and safe to arrange deliveries on short notice.

It’s more like Uber but for goods and furniture. Droppa allows people to book a bakkie or truck to pick up and deliver that gas stove that needs moving, or those chairs & tables required at a wedding, or to take home that million inch flat-screen you just bought.

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Background

In 2004, Khathutshelo Mufamadi matriculated in Limpopo and enrolled for a computer science degree at the University of KwaZulu Natal, which he completed in record time.

He started working as a computer programmer in the banking industry for 7 years and in 2016, decided he needed to concentrate his efforts to the development of Droppa.

The idea for Droppa started back in 2012, when his sister ran a business for renting out tables and chairs for events. Khathu saw a window of opportunity when he always noticed problems with collection and delivery of the goods.

While working as a programmer in 2015, one of Khathu’s colleague went abroad and when he came back, told him all about his trip, which included an Uber ride.

The thought of Uber excited Khathu and prompted him to research Uber’s business model. This research, coupled with the experience he got from his sister’s business, were enough to convince him to call it quits in the corporate world and build his own Droppa.

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Mufamadi joined the Softstart Business and Technology Incubator in June 2016, this programme was funded by government. 3 months later, Khathu had a prototype of the delivery app.

Khathu got another milestone quickly few weeks later as mLab Southern Africa, provided Droppa with funding. Khathu used the funds to build a minimum viable product(MVP) which was completed in mid 2017.

IDF Capital’s programme, “I’m In”, decided to chip in some funds to Droppa, this allowed the company to stay afloat while Khathu and his team tried to figure out a solution to make Droppa a success.

Droppa became part of Google’s Launchpad in 2017, a programme that helps startups across the world build and scale their products.

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Rain co-founder and MTN’s former CTO, Phumlani Moholi, decided to chip in a R2 million investment to further accelerate chances of Droppa achieving success.

In late 2020, Droppa partnered with courier giants, Skynet Worldwide Express, the two will utilize each other’s expertise to increase the much needed employment for drivers in the country.

Droppa doesn’t own any of the vehicles. The owners should register their vehicles with Droppa. From then, Droppa will perform background checks on both the vehicle and driver.

After inspection and the driver is accepted, the company will train him/her on being a Droppa service provider.

According to Khathu, he has to constantly think out of the box in order to keep Droppa sustainable and stay relevant in a changing world. When the pandemic hit, he saw from the get-go that he needed to create an app, as it would enable a better and more effective way of moving goods.

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