Listed pharmacy retail giant Dis-Chem is rebuilding its mobile app from scratch and replacing the e-commerce platform underneath it, with a public release targeted for early 2027.
It is a move that will decide whether the group can defend its health and beauty franchise against Checkers Sixty60, whose parent has said pharmaceuticals are next on the delivery platform.
Yusuf Kaka, head of integrated digital engagement at X, bigly labs, Dis-Chem’s innovation and digital transformation unit, told TechCentral in an exclusive interview that an internal version of the new app is already in use and being tested. He said he is aiming for a public release by early next year, even though several features and functions still have to be worked through.
Both the app and the e-commerce platform behind it are being replaced rather than upgraded. “There was no rescuing the existing app,” Kaka said. On the platform, his assessment was much the same.
Kaka said the app, rather than the website, was where the damage was concentrated. On engagement, customer satisfaction and stickiness, the data showed the web experience was adequate but not good, while the app was where, in his words, Dis-Chem was really annoying customers.
The company’s app store listings carry the same message from users, with reviews complaining of crashes, broken search and a delivery function that stops working.
R330-million, and what it bought
Dis-Chem has already put a number on the division doing the work. In its results for the 12 months to 28 February 2026, the group disclosed that establishing X, bigly labs cost R330-million over the year, describing the spend as front-loaded and saying it expects the investment to turn net positive in FY2027.
The cost hit earnings hard. Group revenue rose 9.3% to R42.8-billion, but basic earnings per share fell 17.1% to 114.2c and headline earnings per share fell 17.3% to 113.7c. The final dividend was cut 42.8% to 15.92c. Strip out the ecosystem investment and non-recurring items in both periods and group profit before tax was up 20.1% — which is the clearest measure of what the build has cost shareholders in the short term.
The market took it badly. Dis-Chem closed about 8% lower on 29 May, the day the results were published, at just below R35/share, from R38.19 two days earlier.
Dis-Chem is not attempting to match Sixty60 on sheer speed. Kaka said the priority is a predictable delivery window rather than a race to the hour, with customers choosing a slot and Dis-Chem fulfilling inside it.
That is less a new capability than a change of emphasis. Dis-Chem launched DeliverD in 2021 with a 7 000-item front-shop catalogue promised within 60 minutes, and later added hourly slot scheduling and expanded the range to 10 000 items. What changes in the new app is which of the two becomes the headline promise.
The app itself will also be deliberately narrower than the current one, which Kaka said tries to do too much.
Fulfilment, unsurprisingly, runs out of the store estate. Dis-Chem ended February with 316 retail pharmacy stores and 42 retail baby stores after opening or acquiring 31 pharmacies during the year. E-commerce coverage has now become a variable in deciding where the next ones go: X, bigly labs has a commercial decision and intelligence team that models drive times from store to customer to work out where new sites would extend delivery reach, alongside store size and range.
Kaka said the group’s analysis shows it can already reach most of the country within a reasonable window.
Scripts are the hard part
The unresolved problem is scheduled medicines. Legislation governs what may be done with different schedules, and a pharmacist has to validate that the patient is entitled to the medication and has been counselled on it. “There is a human in the loop,” Kaka said, describing dispensing rules that have to be built into the e-commerce process rather than worked around.
He called it the remaining complexity the team is working on and the one that is toughest to get right, and said it is solvable but not easy.
But Dis-Chem’s argument is that this complexity is also its defence. Kaka said the group understands the regulatory and pharmacist requirements better than a grocery retailer moving into the category.
Shoprite is moving anyway. Group CEO Pieter Engelbrecht said a year ago that “pharmaceuticals are next” for Sixty60, describing an ambition to have a patient’s medicine waiting at home before they get back from the doctor. The group’s Medirite business operates in-store dispensaries and standalone Medirite Plus pharmacies, and Sixty60 sales grew 34.6% in the six months to December while adjacent businesses grew 70.9%. Kaka confirmed Dis-Chem factors a Shoprite entry into its planning.
Neither of the big pharmacy groups has moved at Shoprite’s pace. Clicks runs more than a thousand stores, around 740 of them pharmacies, and neither it nor Dis-Chem has chased on-demand delivery with anything like Shoprite’s aggression, even though both have the dense footprints, trusted brands and high-frequency customers that e-commerce rewards.
Where X, bigly labs came from
X, bigly labs is a division of Dis-Chem rather than a separate company. It was set up about 18 months ago and now employs about 300 people, including contractors. It is based at Melrose Arch, away from the group’s Midrand head office. Kaka, who previously ran innovation at MTN, said the distance is deliberate: too close and the ability to think differently is hampered, too far and the ability to bring the company along is.
Its remit began as a data problem — a single customer can carry four or five profiles across the group’s pharmacy, retail, clinic and insurance systems — before expanding. E-commerce was subsequently lifted out of Dis-Chem and moved into the division, and the unit was seeded partly through Healthforce, the clinic management and telemedicine software business Dis-Chem has controlled since acquiring 87.5% of it for R48-million in March 2021, and which it moved to take over fully last year. — © 2026 NewsCentral Media
