The CEO of Supermart.ng, Raphael Afaedor has said that his goal in starting an online grocery store is to make life easier and better for households in Africa starting with Lagos state in Nigeria. He made this known while speaking at the 2015 SME conference organized by the Lagos Business School, Nigeria.
While speaking during a panel session titled ‘Stop complaining, embrace innovation’, Afaedor explained that a typical woman in Lagos will have to go from one grocery store to another because she can’t get everything she want in just one store. He went further to say that the woman will still have to go to local market to shop for local ingredients, all in the midst of the unpredictable Lagos Traffic. This according to him makes shopping quite discouraging, tedious and time consuming.
To reduce this stress however, Afaedor noted that Supermart.ng has partnered with leading supermarkets and local markets to put up a one stop shop online with over 60,000 items including Fresh food, foreign products, Nigerian ingredients, general groceries and baby products among others. “Within ten to fifteen minutes, an average customer is done with her shopping on Supermart.ng and the items will be delivered to them in as early as three hours, this saves them about three to six hours of their time which they can invest in more profitable things like resting, reading or enjoying leisure with their spouses or children” Afaedor added.
Joining her voice to affirm Afaedor’s claim, the General Manager of Uber taxi, Lagos said she has been doing her grocery shopping on Supermart.ng and that the website is so simple to operate that even her maid does the shopping on her behalf leaving her with just the responsibility of doing the payment.
In what can be termed a summary of Afaedor’s charge during the panel session, he encouraged all the entrepreneurs present to endeavor to see the many problems in Nigeria as opportunities for them to solve financially rewarding problems.
