Commercial Partnership Manager [Cross Boarder] at takealot.com

Purpose of the role: 

• The Aggregator Partnerships Manager is responsible for building, formalising, and scaling Takealot's relationships with aggregator platforms — the intermediary service providers that help identify and source international sellers and help them to navigate the catalogue creation, payments, currency conversion, South African regulatory compliance, and logistics when selling on the Takealot marketplace.
• This role exists because aggregators represent the single highest-leverage channel for acquiring large cohorts of pre-qualified international sellers at scale, and structured partnership agreements unlock seller pipelines that would otherwise be inaccessible through direct outreach alone.
• The Manager must combine commercial partnership skills with a deep understanding of cross-border e-commerce mechanics and the South African regulatory environment.

Key Responsibilities: 

• Partner Identification & Pipeline Development: Map the global and regional landscape of aggregator platforms, cross-border e-commerce service providers, and seller enablement platforms; build and maintain a prioritised pipeline of prospective aggregator partners aligned to Takealot's target seller profiles.
• Partnership Negotiation & Contracting: Lead commercial and contractual negotiations with aggregator partners, including referral fee structures, co-marketing commitments, data-sharing arrangements, and SLA frameworks; work with Takealot's legal and finance teams to execute partnership agreements.
• Partner Onboarding & Enablement: Develop onboarding programmes, training materials, and go-to-market toolkits that enable aggregator partner teams to effectively pitch and onboard their seller bases onto the Takealot marketplace.
• Relationship Management: Serve as the primary point of contact for all assigned aggregator partners; conduct regular business reviews (monthly/quarterly), manage escalations, and ensure partners remain engaged and commercially motivated.
• Seller Pipeline Management: Work with aggregator partners to build structured seller referral pipelines; track leads from partner referral through to seller activation and first sale, ensuring handoff to the Sales & Account Manager team is seamless.
• Co-Marketing & Campaign Execution: Collaborate with the Takealot marketing team and aggregator partners to design and execute joint acquisition campaigns, seller webinars, trade shows, and promotional programmes targeting international seller communities.
• Compliance Alignment: Ensure that aggregator partners are aligned with SARS (South African Revenue Service) VAT and customs compliance requirements relevant to cross-border sellers; liaise with Takealot's compliance and finance teams to keep partner materials current.
• Partner Performance Monitoring: Define, track, and report on partner-level KPIs (sellers referred, activated, GMV generated); conduct structured quarterly business reviews with each partner and develop improvement plans where targets are missed.
• Market Intelligence: Stay current on competitive aggregator partnership programmes offered by other marketplaces (e.g. Amazon, Noon, Jumia); feed insights back into Takealot's partnership proposition development.

Minimum Required Qualification:

• Bachelor's degree in Commerce, Business, International Trade, or a related field; a postgraduate qualification is advantageous.

Minimum Required Experience:

• Minimum 5 years of experience in strategic partnerships, business development, or channel sales roles — ideally within e-commerce, fintech, payments, or cross-border trade.
• Proven track record of negotiating and closing multi-party commercial agreements with structured revenue or referral components.
• Experience working with or alongside payment platforms, cross-border payment providers, or marketplace aggregators (e.g. Payoneer, PingPong, LianLian, World First, Airwallex, or similar).
• Understanding of South African import regulations, VAT obligations for foreign sellers (SARS eFiling, VAT registration thresholds), and customs processes.
• Excellent relationship management skills with experience managing senior stakeholders at partner organisations.
• Willingness to travel domestically and internationally for partner engagement.

Skills, Knowledge & Abilities:

• Entrepreneurial self-starter who thrives in ambiguous, greenfield environments and can build programmes from the ground up.
• Strong commercial instincts — understands what makes a partnership mutually valuable and can structure creative deal terms.
• Culturally aware and comfortable working with partner organisations based in Asia, Europe, and the Americas.
• Excellent verbal and written communication and presentation skills.
• Data-driven mindset; comfortable using analytics to assess partner performance and make strategic decisions.
• Strong network within the African e-commerce or cross-border trade ecosystem is highly advantageous.
• Fluency in Mandarin or other relevant languages is advantageous given the profile of many cross-border seller communities.

 The Environment:

• takealot.com employees are entrepreneurial and dynamic, smart, customer-centric, fun and have the shared ambition of takealot.com being the leading e-commerce company in Africa.
• We have fun, work hard, take ownership, work in teams to create solutions, and are always open to direct feedback/new ideas on where we can improve
• We are short on ego and high on output
• We are doers and not only thinkers, it’s all in the execution after all
• We love what we do and what we are creating

We seek to Employ an Extra Ordinary Mind who:

• is respectful but forthright
• is an expert at doing, who can not only design but also execute
• is analytical, able to use data to make decisions
• is competitive, self-directed and strive to be the BEST (GREAT requires a lot of work and does not only happen during business hours
• is passionate about the potential of e-commerce and delivering a world-class customer experience
• is entrepreneurial, thrives under change and accepts it is a constant and always looks for solutions to do something better and faster
• is business SMART. Able to think about problems from a business perspective using technical and product input;
• is curious and challenge the status quo
• is innovative and enjoys iteration
• is collaborative
• will be at the cutting edge of developing new concepts for takealot.com
• thinks like an owner of the business
• is SMART, has INTEGRITY and is HARD WORKING