Jiji, a Nigerian online marketplace, has announced the complete acquisition of Tonaton, a Ghanaian classified ads website.
On Monday, January 31, 2022, this was announced. Jiji has previously held positions of leadership in Ghana and Kenya. In addition, the marketplace runs in Uganda and Tanzania, with a total monthly active base of 12 million consumers across all geographies.
Users of Jiji and Tonaton will now have access to a bigger network of buyers and sellers, enhancing trading opportunities and expanding the overall user base in what is considered as a major market consolidation in the classifieds sector.
The transaction’s value was not disclosed by the corporation. In Nigeria, the Jiji app is the most downloaded app in the Shopping category on the Google Play Store, and it is also the country’s highest-rated e-commerce app.
Jiji’s major competition in Ghana at the time of its purchase earlier this month was Tonaton, a Saltside affiliate.
Tonaton, on the other hand, has exploded in popularity as a result of improvements that make it easier for users to buy and sell items online, a strategy that is in accordance with Jiji’s objective.
As a result, in the countries where they operate, both Jiji’s and Tonaton’s apps are consistently ranked as the top shopping apps in the Google Play Store.
Jiji is well-positioned to get into a larger share of the African market with its drive to a large-scale presence in the continent, following its acquisition of OLX in 2019 and its recent acquisition of Cars45 in 2021.
On the current trend drawn by Jiji, CEO and Co-founder, Anton Volianskyi explained that “with OLX and Cars45 under Jiji’s umbrella, we are getting close to becoming a regional leader in classifieds. Jiji is the largest e-commerce company in Africa by GMV (more than $10 billion), leading in small to high-involvement key categories such as cars and real estate. We hold the rank of the best app in e-commerce proudly with a rating of 4.5/5, a gauge of satisfaction from our millions and millions of daily users. The picture is much larger.”
iji said it aims to reduce the unemployment gap in Africa.
“Our goal is to build a company that gives every user in Africa the opportunity to buy goods cheaper and reduce environmental impact through what is effectively a developing lateral economy built on a safe and productive recirculation of valuable goods. We are currently creating at full-tilt hundreds of thousands of new jobs throughout Africa, which allows us to effectively address and help remedy gaps in both unemployment and frictional unemployment.”
Jiji’s Director of African Operations, Yuliy Shenfeld, noted that the acquisition of Tonaton will contribute to the company’s future growth.
“Jiji achieved great success with only a limited presence in Ghana; more than 2 million people visit our website each month. The combination of Jiji’s technology and talent with that of Tonaton will help ensure our continued success in the fast-paced e-commerce industry,” he said.
Jiji has made a point of diversifying its portfolio of services and geographic areas. Jiji has carefully secured a reliable base towards streamlining their services to a projected (SSA) market of 400 million-plus users – a market in which it currently sits as the indisputable leader in several key countries including as Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda, with over $10 billion in gdp.
Source: myjoyonline.com
