South Africa’s digital economy is set to welcome a homegrown challenger. OMN1, a South African-built super app combining e-hailing, food delivery, creator monetisation and messaging in one platform, is set to officially launch nationally on 10 November. The platform is launching with two propositions at the centre of its model: a driver-first payout on every completed trip and a creator monetisation programme designed to be accessible to everyday South African creators. Ahead of its official launch on 10 November, OMN1 enters this environment with a proposition built around a simple 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 is built to give drivers a significantly larger share of every fare than is typical in the market.‘The model is designed around the economic realities faced by e-hailing drivers, including fuel, 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 further expansion planned following the official national launch on 10 November.
FROM FOLLOWERS TO INCOME
The second major proposition sits within OMN1 Hub, the platform’s creator ecosystem. Through the OMN1 Creators Fund, South African creators with a growing audience can earn 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 through the platform. “There is enormous creative talent in this country that has never seen a cent from it,” said Mutavhatatsindi “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 says the concept came from observing how people already move between multiple applications every day. They use one service to travel, another to order food, and others to communicate and build communities.
CAN SOUTH AFRICA BUILD ITS OWN DIGITAL PLATFORM ECONOMY?
For OMN1, the upcoming 10 November national launch is about more than introducing another app to an increasingly crowded technology market. It is a test of whether a locally built platform can 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 the 10 November launch is about. OMN1’s official national launch will take place on 10 November in Johannesburg. The app has been available on Google Play and the Apple App Store since its August 2026 soft launch.