Zimbo Kitchen now monetising on content

One of the promising startups to emerge from Zimbabwe last year called Zimbo Kitchen has now added some features that appear minor, but enhance the detail and experience on Zimbokitchen.com. Most importantly, they have started monetising on their core business by selling a recipe book entitled Zimbabwe Classic Traditional and Fusion Food Recipes which is ready for download on the site for $9.

The first thing that we noticed when we visited the site is little subtle improvements on how content is displayed. We spoke to Arthur the co-founder of Zimbo Kitchen and he played down the new widgets saying the just aimed to improve their presentation but there was nothing to it.

However, from our own assessment, users can now easily get vital information on a particular recipe like servings, time and ingredients buy just looking at certain areas of the page saving people vital time.

Last year we highlighted that Zimbo Kitchen was looking at ways to monetise and just before Christmas 2013, they released their first digital product, a recipe book called Zimbabwe Classic Traditional and Fusion Food Recipes. Arthur says the response so far has been good both in terms of customer feedback on the contents of the book and revenues.

He also highlighted that based on the response of this book, they will be opening up a new online store dedicated to their digital products (we guessing more recipe books), separate from the existing store that mainly sells kitchen utensils and small appliances.

Despite getting some degree of success with ecommerce, the duo still needs to look at the online payments issue.

Current payments are done through generic Ecocash and Paypal which on the one hand generic Ecocash transfers do not necessarily automate the buying process whilst Paypal has low local market penetration but presence huge opportunities with Zimbabweans in the Diaspora. Vpayments and Pay4App are all options they could look into to get more payment options going.