Q&A: Zakaria Hersi, Managing Director, Efritin.com

Even though everyone talks about the competition for the title of the biggest ecommerce company in Nigeria between Jumia and Konga, the real competition appears to be in the marketplace space where OLX, MoboFree, and a few others are outspending each other in their bid to dominate the Nigerian online marketplace ecosystem. The ecosystem got more competitive last year when Efritin.com rolled out its somehow similar yet unique services in the Nigerian market starting with Lagos as explained by Somali entrepreneur, Zakaria Hersi, who is also the Managing Director of Efritin – a platform that sells everything, almost everything.

Innovation Village (IV): Did the peculiarity of the Nigerian market have any influence whatsoever on the official introduction of Efritin in Nigeria?

Zakaria Hersi (ZH): We had to push the official launch date because we wanted to ensure things were in order in Nigeria before rolling out.

IV: What attracted you to Nigeria?

ZH: We were attracted to Nigeria because of the market size, market potentials and internet penetration. While just a small fraction of online Nigerians are fraudulent, the Yahoo boys (and girls) have created a big issue for the rest. So Efritin had to do a thorough job on safety and they are achieving this verification.

We are the first marketplace platform that does physical verification and deliveries. We verify every seller on our site before they start selling. The process should take around 24 – 48 hours. We verify them with government issued IDs, save them in our database and allow them to post ads. Even when they post ads, we still review them to ensure they are of the right pricing and are in order. And finally it goes live on our site.

IV: What has the experience been in Nigeria?

ZH: We have had more than 750,000 verified ads come into our system, we have had more than 200,000 app installs, and we have verified more than 30,000 sellers on our platform. The sellers are located throughout Nigeria.

IV: Is it true that one can get everything on Efritin?

ZH: Basically, Efritin sells everything – as long as it is legal. In addition to the stringent requirements regarding what could be sold on Efritin, you will be required to take a photo of your legal means of identification (ID) and another photo of you holding the identification before you can sell anything on our platform. We also ensure that the right price is charged and the goods are in best condition to avoid bad experiences for customers.

IV: What is your plan for profitability?

ZH: When we launched in Nigeria, we were focused on investing, building the brand and being able to build the actual service and quality. We are introducing new features on our site that are very innovative in its way that we are able to help sellers sell more on our site and give them a wider reach on our platform. Our type of platform is a whole ecosystem because we have delivery guys. Which means we are able to move into monetization later on with third-party ads – if you want to post your ad and you want it high up you can do it. There is a lot of ways we can monetize and we are actually going to move into that within a very short period.

IV: What can Nigerian governments at all levels do to make your operations smoother?

ZH: Infrastructure. Infrastructure needs to improve drastically as much – and as soon – as possible. For us, we are doing as much as possible on a lower level. We went from zero people to 180 employees, a lot of them are young and vibrant, coming out of schools. We’re helping to invest in a lot of people on the team and hopefully they will move on to the next level in their lives; they will start creating more companies and more jobs but they still need the infrastructure to be able to do these.

IV: How has the prevailing economic situations in Nigeria affected your operations?

ZH: The market is good for us as people are more prudent in what they buy and sell. People who want to make a little cash over can make use of our platform to be able to make some money to pay school fees and to take care of as many bills as possible.

IV: What is your rollout plan for Efritin Delivers?

ZH: We believe in doing things that are of best quality and that was why we initially focused on Lagos. We want to be able to handle operations in Lagos. We are not yet offering it in other cities because of interstate delivery headaches, and the existence of logistics firms who are able to do that well than us. We are not fully marketing the service yet.