The man who sold his company to Pick n Pay for R33 million is taking on Checkers Sixty60

Enrico Ferigolli co-founded an on-demand delivery app, Bottles, with his friend Vincent Viviers in 2016. Four years later, they sold their company to Pick n Pay for R33 million.

Now, Ferigolli heads up the retailer’s omnichannel division, where he is transforming the Pick n Pay asap! app in a battle for market share against Shoprite’s Sixty60.

An Italian now living in South Africa, Ferigolli spent most of his formative years in Italy.

It was there where he obtained his higher education degrees, starting with a Bachelor of Business Administration at the Università Ca’​ Foscari Venezia.

He went on to earn an MSc in Marketing Management from Università Bocconi before entering the workforce in 2009.

His career started at Tata Consultancy Services, where he completed an internship before moving on to Unilever.

Ferigolli worked in various positions at Unilever in Italy, South Africa, and Central Africa for five years.

His next career move was to Gorilla Creative Media, where he served as a business unit director and board member.

It was during his stint at Gorilla that Ferigolli and Viviers, whom he met while working at Unilever in the 2010s, began developing a business together.

The two had bonded over a personal experience at a braai where they wanted to purchase drinks but realised that there was no convenient way to do so.

This spark made them notice a gap in the market for an on-demand alcohol delivery service, which is exactly what they built.

The Bottles app launched in March 2016, taking South Africa’s alcohol retail landscape by storm.

At that point, Shoprite’s Sixty60 service had not yet gone to market, and on-demand delivery apps were still in their infancy in South Africa.

Ferigolli and Viviers’ offering was so successful that it caught the attention of major grocery retailer Pick n Pay, whose Liquor business teamed up with Bottles in mid-2018.

This partnership cemented Bottles’ place as the leading on-demand alcohol delivery service in South Africa, with the business now able to source from 60 Pick n Pay liquor stores nationwide.

From Bottles to Pick n Pay asap!

Trouble hit in March 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, and lockdown regulations were put into place.

At the higher stages of lockdown, alcohol sales were banned in South Africa, presenting a major threat to Bottles’ business.

However, Ferigolli and Viviers pivoted, leveraging their now two-year-old relationship with Pick n Pay.

In just four days, Bottles became an on-demand grocery essentials app, offering same-day grocery deliveries across the country.

In a 2020 interview with Womentum, Ferigolli attributed much of the success of this rapid pivot to their strong relationship and trust with Pick n Pay.

Viviers described it as a “mutually beneficial partnership”, saying Pick n Pay benefitted from Bottles’ reach and logistics capabilities.

This partnership proved highly successful, and Bottles became South Africa’s largest and most popular on-demand online grocery business.

Nine months after the partnership was expanded, Pick n Pay signed on the dotted line and acquired Bottles, saying this would allow it to build on the company’s success.

The R33 million acquisition was concluded in December 2020, officially bringing Bottles into the Pick n Pay stable. 

That same month, Ferigolli joined the retailer as a general manager of its tech and operations business.

Bottles quickly became an integral part of Pick n Pay’s online offering, which was now contending with a new competitor: Sixty60, which launched in November 2019. 

In August 2021, Pick n Pay announced that it would be relaunching and rebranding Bottles to Pick n Pay asap!.

A few months later, in February 2022, the retailer announced that a familiar face would lead its e-commerce segment, with Ferigolli appointed as the retail executive for omnichannel.

Ferigolli leads Pick n Pay asap!

Under Ferigolli’s stewardship, Pick n Pay asap! has grown into one of the biggest on-demand delivery services in South Africa, and a primary growth engine for the retailer.

Following the relaunch of Pick n Pay asap!, on-demand sales delivered year-on-year growth of 300%. 

By the end of the 2022 financial year, the service had expanded to 392 supermarkets and liquor stores.

In October 2022, Ferigolli was instrumental in Pick n Pay’s partnership with the Takealot Group to launch Pick n Pay groceries on its Mr D service.

This combined Pick n Pay’s extensive store network and picking systems with Mr D’s active user base of 2.5 million customers and 15,000 delivery drivers.

Driven by asap! And the Mr D rollout, Pick n Pay’s on-demand online sales doubled in its 2023 financial year.

These sales would double again in the 2024 financial year, rising 102.3% year-on-year.

In October 2023, Ferigolli oversaw the relaunch of asap! with cloud-based architecture and artificial intelligence (AI) features.

Through these upgrades, Pick n Pay and Ferigolli established asap! as the number two on-demand grocery delivery service in South Africa.

Pick n Pay’s online division hit a milestone in the 2025 financial year, achieving profitability on a fully costed basis, with online turnover growing 48.7% year-on-year.

Another asap! Upgrade came in April 2025, when the company launched its next-generation app that integrated Smart Shopper rewards and value-added services directly into the user interface.

Ferigolli and his team have not slowed down in the 2026 financial year, adding three major upgrades to the asap! App.

The first update, which came in March, was the addition of Pick n Pay Clothing, allowing customers to order apparel items through the delivery app.

In July 2026, Ferigolli introduced Penny, Pick n Pay’s AI-powered, multi-modal shopping assistant, to the asap! app.

Penny can assist asap! users with building shopping baskets, answering questions, and helping with “smart shopping”.

Most recently, Ferigolli unveiled a new, market-first feature: Inspire, a shoppable video content feed built directly into the asap! App.

The feature was formally launched to the public on Tuesday, 25 August, and allows viewers to interact with hosts and shop featured product deals while watching on the asap! app itself.

Ferigolli told Daily Investor ahead of the Inspire launch that he and his team have even more updates planned for the near future.

“There’s gonna be a lot more coming your way over the next few months,” he said.

“The reality is that my job at Pick n Pay is not just to try and mimic what our competitor has done successfully, it is to overtake them.”

“It is to really create new and exciting ways to interact with Pick n Pay, and we’re here, we’re doing it.”