After series of speculations, rumors and unconfirmed reports, regarding claims that Efritin.com had closed shop in Nigeria, owners of the company, Saltside Technologies, today confirmed the development and dealt with several assumptions regarding the fate of the online classifieds company.
Nils Hammer, CEO of Saltside Technologies, in an interview described as untrue reports that the company is shutting down because of lawsuits that the company is having in several courts. Concerning the fate of the company, he confirmed that the company is cutting down its workforce but stressed that the platform will not be shut down (as against widely reported assertions). According to him, it will continue to perform its present functions only that the company will not be investing more money in it.
“I can’t comment in a legal process – whether or not they are true or what the status is. I just want to make sure it’s clear that this is not the reason why this is happening. I saw somewhere that there were some rumours that we are leaving Nigeria because of the legal issues. That is absolutely not the case, it has nothing to do with the decision to pause our investment in Nigeria.”
What led to the decision
According to him, the decision to “pause investment in Efritin.com” was as a result of the inability of the investors to get returns on their investments and the underperformance of Efritin in comparison to the company’s ventures in other parts of the world – Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia and they have by far the biggest classifieds site in Ghana – Tonaton – suggesting that there is nothing wrong with the product instead, the market appears not yet mature enough for classifieds companies like Efritin.com
He argued that the cost of data in Nigeria is high in comparison to elsewhere. He noted that many of the targeted users of Efritin.com cannot afford to use data in the country.
“The decision to leave basically has to do with the fact that we didn’t get desired returns on our investment, so we decided to scale back on our investments in Nigeria and that means we are forced to let many people leave the company. I would like to clarify that the site is not going to be closed, it is still up and running and working just fine as it has been. It doesn’t mean that we are never going to start investing in Nigeria again. I think that’s definitely a possibility. Our view is that the Nigerian market for ecommerce and classifieds is a tricky one at the moment for a few different reasons. We didn’t see it was worthwhile our investment at the moment.”
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