Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Mall for Africa CEO Chris Folayan (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What is the size of your customer base? How many African consumers are interacting with your mobile application to buy products from the US and UK? Chris Folayan: We have several hundred thousand customers on our platform. The amount of sales done on our mobile platform is about 52% right now. Sramana Mitra:

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Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Mall for Africa CEO Chris Folayan (Part 4)

Chris Folayan: What I’ve noticed even from sales on our platform is that people are moving towards tablets – mostly tablets with SIM cards in them because then, you have constant data. The adoption of WiFi all over is not something that is common in Africa at this time. You have people adopting tablets. They’re looking for bigger screens

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Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Mall for Africa CEO Chris Folayan (Part 3)

Chris Folayan: Most of the financial transactions right now are based on purchasing of items. In Nigeria, for example, you can buy your airplane tickets on your mobile device. You also have new applications out there using which you can hail a taxi – something like Uber. Mobile payment is something that’s picking up. It hasn’t exploded as

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Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Mall for Africa CEO Chris Folayan (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How do you estimate the size of that market currently? How much is the volume of e-commerce that’s happening? Also, what is the volume of cross-boundary e-commerce that’s happening? Chris Folayan: As far as volume of e-commerce happening across Africa is concerned, it’s well in billions of dollars at this point in time.  It’s

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Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Mall for Africa CEO Chris Folayan (Part 1)

E-Commerce is blossoming all over the world. In this story, we take a close look at what is happening in Africa, especially Nigeria. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with introducing our audience to yourself as well as Mall For Africa. Tell us about what you do and what’s happening in your world. Chris Folayan: I’m the

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1Mby1M Deal Radar 2010: ShopForBags.com

ShopForBags (SFB) is a women-owned apparel and handbags distributor that targets small-town salons, boutiques, and retail outlets. It also has its own private label, Katydid. The company sells handbags, messenger bags, laptop bags, belts and wallets, and apparel for women, men, and children.

Saving Lives with Cashews in Mozambique

By Guest Author Bruce McNamer More than one billion people are going hungry on a daily basis, according to the United Nations World Food Programme. On average, that amounts to more than one out of every seven people on the planet. With our global levels of wealth, knowledge and resources, that number is unacceptable to

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VisionSpring: Successful Scaling Of A Microfranchise (Part 1)

By Guest Author Praneetha Manthravadi [Praneetha’s article is both a profile of an organization for microentrepreneurship and a call to action. Read on to find out what VisionSpring does and how you can get involved.] VisionSpring, previously known as the Scojo Foundation, was started in 2001 by Dr. Jordan Kassalow. The organization was started from

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