DATA IS THE NEW RAW MATERIAL FROM AFRICA
It was Cabinet Office Minister, Francis Maude, that said data is ‘the new raw material of the 21st century’.
I agree.
Why?
For the last 7 months, I and my small team have been working out of a small scrappy office inside of West Africa’s biggest Market, Balogun Market Lagos, to lead and understand this chat-commerce play we pivoted into via my startup, Balogunmarket.ng
Leaving behind a comfortable office space in high brow Lekki Phase 1, Lagos to search for the next ‘goldmine’, we went into the market to execute pure play e-commerce [Amazon Style].The burn rate was high. Infact, it wasn’t working. E-commerce was dead. At least to us. The Market traders made us understand the type of entry they preferred into the digital age. We listened and we saw success and became “ Data Miners” .
Everyday, my team of Moderators engaged in chats based on product requests from Nigerians who intended to shop from this market using Whatsapp, the very popular messaging app. We were willing to sacrifice personal comfort to understand the Nigerian Shopper. Especially the ones who were NOT “online” . What they wanted and what they preferred.
Chats gave us something huge to mine.
The results.
Balogunmarket.ng will not scale.
Why?
As little as our ambitions were for coming to this market, it has shown us another path. Balogunmarket.ng was actually just a validation that messaging commerce has come to stay in Africa. That in fact, we were actually a platform that could sit on all market clusters across African cities .That payments and delivery were the key monetization hooks of this.That content and commerce have finally sealed their marriage and that ‘ the line of separation between church and state’ will continue to blur.
For weeks , we extended to using Facebook messenger to push commerce within this market. We encouraged our Merchants/retailers in the markets to subscribe to our “ home-grown “ Facebook Messenger Chatbot to communicate with the office.
Our 120,000+ Whatsapp ready customers were implored to subscribe to our Facebook Messenger “ChatBot” .We recorded 50% success with this. We continued the chats on both products of Facebook [Messenger and Whatsapp] with our customers , in our role sometimes as “ shopping assistants” or “moderators in chats between customer and trader” directly facing the market daily.
We became “BUYOVERCHAT TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED”, executing chat commerce across two messaging platforms people were already playing in. It made a lot of sense.
#BuyOverChat
We gave the traders free photographic support for inventory and added gorgeous street-style content to trigger transactions .
Nothing opens the door to commerce more than content.
Yet, it was laborious. Its was hectic. Close of Market at 6pm meant close of business for us for the day. We intended to operate for 24 hours. That was just not possible. Lagos has refused to become a 24 hour city. We couldn’t grow under these conditions of executing manually. Yet,we couldn’t build a garden inside of another man’s “ empire” .
BUYOVERCHAT TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED got spotted by the accelerator platform focused on Emerging Markets SEEDSTARS WORLD. Mr Benjamin Benaim, Managing Partner, contacted me. We had a brief meeting. I liked him from jump. I rarely do. He understood what I was trying to build. He had that clarity. He asked the right questions. I was to attend classes and sessions to put me up to scratch in the world of Entrepreneurship for 4months.
I learnt a lot in the first 2 weeks of attending the sessions in their nice SEEDSPACE co-working space in high brow Parkview, Ikoyi, Lagos twice a week. My team too started grabbing what I had learnt. Even my team started using Trello to put things in order! We understood how to detail data and analyze it.
While I would encourage budding Nigerian entrepreneurs to apply for the SEEDSTARS ACADEMY OR GROWTH program, I have a notorious reputation of disliking classroom-based education.
I dropped out of the program.
4 days later, I put together a product plan. Using Data from our chat records, we analyzed and developed perfect product strategy. I brought in a high value product manager. Our chats showed clearly these things .
Messaging and Maps will be the new browser and notifications as the new apps….voice recognition for dictation and translation, but we were not too sure about the “chatbots” …yet
The next day, after a 5 minute pitch, we raised ”some money” as seed to remove our growth barrier from a “Private Investment Fund” based in Lagos, Niche Capital Limited
It is a simple messaging app, starting with Andriod. It will sit on major city markets across Africa.City by City based.
Our core investor and advisory lead nicknamed it ‘BuyChat’ .
I called it “Commerce enabled Whatsapp for Informal African Markets”.
Peer to Market. The ultimate call center for Brands and services.
Call center 2.0
Become an early user and tester here : www.buychat.ng
It will be payment enabled by SimplePay, the startup run by Simeon Ononobi with logistics run by Delivery.ng run by ex-Balogunmarket.ng staff, AdeKunle Adebowale
BuyChat will be an app with lots of apps all working via simple messaging.You would discover and buy direct from City Market traders via chat. You would be able to make an order from local Bukas via chat , grab short stay offers at hourly rates from partner hotels, hail a local taxi, pay bills and enjoy exclusive offers from cinemas around you in your city.
BuyChat will generate a lot of data from the merchants and from the users.
Artificial Intelligence( AI) is our next match to make ErrandBOT,our app resident AI inspired BOT to perform better and serve customers better 24/7.
ErrandBOT will alternate its residence between BuyChat and Facebook Messenger.
Financial inclusion in Africa was our main agenda, using Balogun Market as a model market. That is what drives me in the morning to this chaotic market everyday.
Wish us luck!
About the Author
Olayinka Oluwakuse III is the founder of Balogunmarket.ng, BUYOVERCHAT TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED and BuyChat.ng
