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: The rest are desktop?

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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 but all with SIM connections.

Sramana Mitra: It sounds like what Africa is looking for is a larger phone that also doubles up as a tablet.

Chris Folayan: It is. That’s what they’re looking for. I see that trend picking up here slowly.

Sramana Mitra: India also went through this process. India doesn’t have this ubiquitous WiFi. In United States, we have this ubiquitous WiFi. That gives you a different level of access and viability for a tablet that does not have a SIM card or a phone connection. In India, the WiFi-based tablet model doesn’t really have that much applicability. >>>

India’s Unicorn Company Aims High

Adapted from my new book, From eCommerce To Web 3.0

We discussed in an earlier Unicorn post that emerging markets can offer tremendous opportunities to build significant businesses if investors are willing to be patient, which they are not known to be. Let’s look at India’s e-commerce market as a case study.

Relatively speaking, the Indian e-commerce has grown at a slow pace.

Compared to India’s 2013 market of ~$2 billion, the Chinese market was ~$300 billion, surpassing the US as the world’s largest e-commerce market.

Forrester says, India had a total population of 1.28 billion in 2013, of whom, nearly 16% or a little over 200 million are online. Only 14% of the online users currently purchase online (~30 million).

Forrester expects the online buyer population in India to grow to 128 million by 2018.
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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 most people would have thought. It’s pretty much because Africa is still trying to get a grasp of the change, and it’s going to take a generation or two for that change to happen. Africa has always been a cash-based society, so you, like most third-world countries, are changing from cash-based society to electronic-based. It is taking some time to happen, but it is happening. >>>

From eBay Seller to $20 Million Revenue Business

Excerpt from my book, From eCommerce To Web 3.0.

Back in the days of Web 1.0, eBay kicked off the trend for online marketplaces in the world of electronic commerce. Since then, many ultra-light startups have mushroomed that focus on niche segments. Ultra-light startups have become a key trend in the e-commerce world and WatchUWant CEO OJ Whatley’s entrepreneurial journey offers some delightful insights. Selling a product on eBay that was a passion, he went on to build a $20 million business with just 20 employees.

Watches had always been a passion with OJ. From Star Wars R2-D2 and Darth Vader watches, his passion evolved to freestyle sports watches and Casio GShocks. He bought his first luxury watch, a Rolex Submariner, with some prize money that he won in college. With WatchUWant, he wanted to take his passion and turn it into a profit opportunity.
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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 only getting stronger because you have the influence of financial dynamics taking place where mobile operators are reducing the cost to get online from their mobile devices. Bandwidth is basically becoming cheaper, so people are using their smartphones to do more transactions and data gathering to make purchases and to just inquire about various things. The trend is definitely an uptick.

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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 Founder and CEO of Mall for Africa. Mall for Africa is an online application both for PC and mobile that allows people in Africa to purchase items from US and UK sites. Most companies currently do not ship directly to any country in Africa, but Africa is a thriving continent and people there want to purchase items from the US and UK. Since many sites in the US and UK don’t do that, we’ve created a platform that, in essence, opens up  true global e-commerce to the people of Africa. >>>

A Latin American Unicorn From Argentina

Adapted from my new book, From eCommerce To Web 3.0.

So far, we have only looked at American companies [Tableau, FireEye, RightNow, Palo Alto Networks, Kayak and SuccessFactors] in the Unicorn series.

There is a market of 500 million people – nearly 8.6% of the world’s population – that the business media all too often neglects, serving up story after story on China and India. Forgotten is all of Latin America.

Between 2000 and 2007, the number of Internet users in Latin America grew from 18.1 million to 122.4 million, a compounded annual growth rate of 32% compared with only 12% in North America during the same period. Average penetration across Latin America was approximately 21.5%, compared to 71.4% for the US. Even with such low penetration, Latin America’s Internet population represented close to 10% of the world’s Internet users.

Fast forward to 2014, numbers have exploded, touching 300 million. Analysts forecast 393 million users in 2017.
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