Simeon Ononobi is the Co-founder/CEO of Connected Analytics (ThankUCash). The company has just launched a new venture called Dealday Africa, an e-commerce platform that promotes deals, discounts on products and services
In this interview with Innovation Village, he tells us a lot more about Dealday Africa and his vision for the venture.
Innovation Village: I see you have launched a site called Dealday Africa that promotes deals, discounts on products and services. Tell us about this site and what you intend to achieve with this site
Simeon Ononobi: Now if you have been following our work at ThankUCash, our focus has always been how to make merchants have a relationship with their customers. If they have a relationship, then it means they can bring these customers back, delight them and get to increase their sales. So when we thought about tools, we explored the tool of using not just Loyalty, Surveys or even Gift cards as we have on ThankUCash , we thought about deals. What if merchants can sell deals to customers and make them turnover faster than they should? Would that not help cash flow? Also on the customer side, we believed things were hard for most people so saving on items that you need or desire would go a long way to put smiles on their faces. That is why we created it.
The site is a fully functional deals site, majorly for goods and products and it’s just the beginning. It is not just a site for deals but a feeder to create the first fully API driven platform to create a deals community.
Innovation Village: What is the relationship between this deals site and ThankUCash? Is there any synergy between the two entities?
Simeon Ononobi: ThankUCash is the company’s main brand. As you know, the company name is Connected Analytics and it has its brand name as ThankUCash, Dealday is just a tool under ThankUCash. ThankUCash was created as I said earlier to help businesses with tools like loyalty, surveys, email and sms direct marketing, gift cards, deals and lots more. We have created tools under that ThankUCash brand that allows us utilise technology to help businesses with growth, from a happy customer’s perspective. We believe happy customers, happy merchants.
Innovation Village: You do know that there was once a deals site called Dealdey but it shut down its operations in 2019. How is Dealday Africa different from Dealdey?
Simeon Ononobi: Yes, we do know about Dealdey and many other deals site that have shut down. We are different in the sense that our approach is different as this is not a stand alone business, neither is our execution stand alone. We leverage partnerships and are generally creating a marketplace for merchants to showcase their products, APIs to allow partners, large businesses and conglomerates to use this as a value added service to their customers and finally we want everyone to benefit once you are part of the value chain. So unlike others that were standalone businesses, we are a platform for others to use and grow.
Innovation Village: Have you identified any key challenges that the previous deals site faced and how are you planning to overcome them?
Simeon Ononobi: We generally rely on others to succeed. We are making this a part of something bigger. We don’t own any inventory, we just connect and also as brokers we help facilitate the merchants reaching larger groups by leveraging the spread of our APIs on multiple platforms. Imagine getting deals on one of your favourite banking app, or your consumer game site, or even your chat application; we want to spread deals to everyone. The great thing is we don’t just earn, we share the earnings across all the participants on the value chain. So instead of reaching ten thousand people, you can reach millions of people in various groups.
I encourage everyone who has a product and has a group of customers to leverage our platform to provide more value, from insurance companies to gaming companies to banks and even tech chat applications. The more the merrier.
Innovation Village: What is your business model and how is it different from the previous deals site that closed down?
Simeon Ononobi: I believe I have explained this above. We create a solution that is platform and APIs based and then you pay for a product and we share the commissions with everyone in the ecosystem or what we call the value chain.
Innovation Village: How do you plan to build trust with your customers given that a similar deals site failed in the past?
Simeon Ononobi: We don’t own or have customers as I have stated in my previous answers. We leverage partners who already have built trust and then sell through them to the customer. So if you trust Bank A, you will buy from Bank A and get the value you would ordinarily get directly from us.
Innovation Village: Do you have a different management team for Dealday Africa or would it be managed by the same team managing ThankUCash?
Simeon Ononobi: Same management team same company with particular focus by some team members. Its the same company so the same team.
Innovation Village: What is your long-term vision for the deals site and how do you plan to achieve it?
Simeon Ononobi: In the long run, we want to be known a company that created a solution that will outlast a single platform and fully move into an API managed deals platform. We want to create market places for financial institutions, create value added services for retail apps and much more. Spreading this across Africa is our ultimate aim.
