South Africa’s digital economy officially welcomes a homegrown challenger today as OMN1, a locally built super app combining e-hailing, food delivery, creator monetisation, and messaging, launches nationally across the country. The platform officially goes live today with two core propositions at the centre of its economic model: a driver-first payout on every completed Move trip and a creator monetisation programme designed to be accessible to everyday South African creators. Entering the market today, OMN1 challenges the status quo with a fundamental question: what happens when the people generating value on a digital platform are placed closer to the centre of its economic model?
A Different Proposition for E-Hailing Drivers
OMN1’s Move service officially rolls out nationally today, built to give drivers a significantly larger share of every fare than is typical in the market. The model is designed around the real-world economic pressures faced by e-hailing drivers, including fuel costs, vehicle finance, maintenance, and household responsibilities. “Drivers are not a cost line to be optimised. They are the business,” said Livhuwani Mutavhatatsindi, Chief Executive Officer of OMN1. “If a driver cannot cover fuel, finance, and maintenance and still take something home, the model has failed, no matter how good the technology looks. We built OMN1 in South Africa, for South African conditions, and our driver payout is the clearest expression of that.” OMN1 has conducted in-person driver onboarding in Johannesburg and currently operates Move across Midrand, Sandton, Rosebank, and the Johannesburg CBD and inner city, with broader national expansion scaling up from today.
From Followers to Income
The second major proposition launching today sits within OMN1 Hub, the platform’s creator ecosystem.Through the OMN1 Creators Fund, South African creators with a growing audience can earn directly from their content, with rewards based on how their work performs on the platform. OMN1 aims to help a significant number of South African creators build meaningful monthly income starting today. “There is enormous creative talent in this country that has never seen a cent from it,” Mutavhatatsindi noted. “The people producing the culture everyone else monetises are the ones getting paid last. We wanted a model where a creator with a modest following in Tembisa or Khayelitsha can earn real money without waiting to be discovered.”
One Platform for Everyday Life
The platform brings together Move for e-hailing, OMN1 Dine for food delivery, OMN1 Hub and the OMN1 Creators Fund for creator monetisation, and Connect for messaging. The company developed the concept after observing how everyday users constantly jump between multiple applications using one service to travel, another to order food, and others to communicate and build communities.
Can South Africa Build Its Own Digital Platform Economy?
Today’s national launch is about much more than introducing another app to an increasingly crowded technology market. It marks a definitive test of whether a locally built platform can successfully compete by designing around the economic realities of South African drivers, creators, consumers, and businesses. “South Africans have been using platforms built elsewhere, priced elsewhere, and answerable elsewhere for over a decade,” said Mutavhatatsindi. “There is no reason a world-class super app cannot be built here. That is what today’s launch is all about.”
OMN1’s official national launch takes place in Johannesburg today. The application is available for download immediately on Google Play and the Apple App Store.
