By Modupe Gbadeyanka
The online marketplace in Kenya has now been taken over by Jiji two years after it opened its shop in the country, serving the consumers in the East African country with quality services.
In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Jiji entered the Kenya market and has since become the fastest growing e-commerce with over 6 million users and 2 million ads in Kenya.
In March 2022, Alexa, a website traffic analytics platform, ranked the firm as the leading platform among all, having 2.5 million unique visitors monthly compared to 1.5 million in 2021, indicating that it nearly doubled its year-over-year performance.
When Jiji Kenya started two years ago, it witnessed increased activities on the platform as many small and medium-sized enterprises turned online to reach more consumers due to movement restrictions imposed to contain COVID-19. As a result, they registered a sharp growth in the number of sellers to 100,000 while active monthly users surged to 800,000.
Online marketplaces have become the preferred shopping platform in Africa. According to a Jiji Kenya survey of its customer base, more than 45 per cent preferred the marketplace due to the variety of goods and services.
Survey results published in a UNCTAD report in March this year also found that more than 40 per cent of customers in four large African countries were planning to reduce their supermarket shopping in the future by purchasing food, clothing, and electronics online.
Supply chain constraints, delivery, and transport expenses plus difficulties in meeting customer shipping requirements are a challenge for many online platforms forcing customers to opt to shop on marketplaces, rather than e-commerce stores.
Commenting on the achievement, the Country Manager for Jiji, Maksym Golubev, stated that, “Our rapid growth is the result of building a new trusted e-commerce environment for all buyers and sellers in the market and introducing features that would highly benefit them.
“Through our relentless efforts on customer success and new innovations, we have become the most downloaded platform.”
“Over the past year, we have invested heavily in reducing scam levels by up to 10 times and educating our users on safety measures. As a result, we have been awarded twice as the best E-commerce site and twice as the best classifieds website in Kenya,” Golubev added.
Also commenting, the CEO and Founder of Jiji Africa, Anton Volianskyi, disclosed that “Jiji Kenya has quickly become the most trusted platform because of its dedication to customer success and breakneck developments.
Jiji Kenya’s aggressive growth strategy parallels what I envisioned when I started Jiji Africa. It is such a pivotal time for the company and we aim to reduce the churning rate to retain the coveted number one position in Kenya.”
