By Adedapo Adesanya
The Nigerian e-commerce company, Autochek, has acquired CoinAfrique, a classified ad marketplace, to accelerate its car financing services to Francophone countries in Africa.
The classified ad marketplace is said to attract 60,000 new ads and 1.5 million visits every month, with the car category accounting for half of the business transactions happening on the site.
CoinAfrique, founded in 2016, will join the Autochek team and help them run operations in the region.
Autochek has rolled out its operations in Benin, Togo, and Senegal following the acquisition, with more markets set to be activated as the auto marketplace expands.
CoinAfrique classifieds ads marketplace is active in 12 Francophone markets while Autochek was previously present in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Uganda and Morocco.
In its current markets, Autochek said, it has more than 1,500 dealers as partners and works closely with more than 70 banks including BNP Paribas, Access Bank, Ecobank, UBA, Bank of Africa and NCBA Bank to offer to finance to its customers.
Speaking on the move, co-founder of CoinAfrique, Mr Matthais Papet said – “We see many opportunities to unlock value for users across all the categories on our platform and to expand into new countries, and we are looking forward to leveraging Autochek’s market-leading loans product and expertise to deliver more transformative experiences for our users.”
Autochek earns by charging a fee to dealers listing on its platforms, in addition to a loan facilitation commission from banks.
The company, which in October last year raised $13.1 million in a seed round, is backed by a number of investors including pan-African VC firms TLcom Capital, 4DX Ventures, Golden Palm Investments, Enza Capital, Lateral Capital, ASK Capital and Mobility 54 Investment SAS, the venture capital arm of Toyota Tsusho and CFAO Group.
In May, it forayed into the North African market following the acquisition of Moroccan auto marketplace KIFAL Auto.
The company expects to take a huge chunk of Africa’s expected $42 billion automotive markets in the next five years while registering a compound annual growth rate of 5.5 per cent.
