CAPE TOWN - The South African Clothing and Textile Workers Union (Sactwu) on Monday, came out in strong support of Sagarmatha Technologies (ST), saying its investment in the media and e-commerce venture would benefit workers greatly as SA fashion would be showcased locally and beyond the country's borders.
Sagarmatha would become Africa's first multi-sided platform (MSP) company.
Sactwu said its investment in Sagarmatha Technologies would mean bursaries for its members and would include a range of other benefits -- one of the most important being promoting locally made garments.
"In the future, we envisage a much bigger market via Sagarmatha's eCommerce and content platforms, in taking South African produced fashion to not only local citizens, but making them available to customers beyond our borders. We believe this is a win-win scenario," Sactwu said.
"South African clothing and textile sector has taken a beating in the last few years, so investing into Sagarmatha Technologies means we are participating in the new economy -- digital -- which will be more inclusive and sustainable."
The listing of ST has been widely lauded by its investors which include black empowerment groups.
The Black Business Council secretary-general, George Sebulela, in an opinion piece published last week, also pledged support for Sagarmatha Technologies’ listing.
"The Black Business Council’s (BBC) support of Sagarmatha Technologies is based on its own interrogation of the business model, and the fact that broad-based- black involvement in this venture will free up participative economic growth by putting it into the hands of the people - literally," wrote Sebulela.
"It would be remiss of us as at the BBC to ignore the attempts to derail Sagarmatha Technologies’ listing, with attacks from some quarters on some of the personalities, businesses, and institutions involved. While focused on this, they have missed the finer points of the MSP business model, especially when in South Africa alone, the forecast for online spending is expected to reach more than R53 billion in 2018."
Federation of Unions of South Africa (Fedusa) general secretary, Dennis George, also complimented Sagarmatha.
"Sagarmatha is great for Africa, great for the youth and is in line with the YES Campaign under the leadership of President Cyril Ramaphosa. Sagarmatha will train thousands of young black engineers in the areas of artificial intelligence, data science, and software development”.
The Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) has granted Sagarmatha Technologies approval for a listing of up to 1,214,718,441 shares in the media sector on its main board and is due to list on Friday 13 April 2018.