Competition drives consumer education in e-commerce – OLX boss

• Says more than 50 per cent of e-commerce market remain untapped

The Country Manager of Nigeria’s online classified, OLX, Adedeji Oyinlola has said that competition by different operators in the e-commerce space in Nigeria is healthy as it drives consumer education.
Oyinlola stated this in an exclusive interview on the outlook of online business in Nigeria for 2014.

He noted that in the industry, it is the bid by operators to outdo their competition that results to competition which is healthy for growth and quintessential for consumer education.
He said, “In this industry we love competition, and that is healthy because the more the competition, the more we educate Nigerians. For instance, when Jumia puts an advert out there, it benefits OLX and all the other operators, and vice versa when Konga or any other operator decides to advertise. And that is very healthy for e-commerce growth in Nigeria because, the more education the consumers have, the more users we would have in the online business space. The competition is what that now drives consumer education.”
Speaking on e-business outlook in 2014, he explained that the outlook is favourable but there are still huge untapped opportunities, as more than fifty per cent of the market remain untapped. He therefore noted that creativity on the part of operators is required to successfully explore the market.
“2014 will be a very interesting year. For the electronic business in Nigeria, we have not really exploited the market fully. And to do that, all the operators in the industry need to become creative. This is because we have not even tapped 50 per cent of the market. It is still a journey. What we have been able to do is to educate Nigerians.
And the education we have given Nigerians over these few years is meaningful, because, perception and awareness of online business has improved significantly. There was a time in this country that if you tell people to transact business online, they will feel its all fraud. But now the momentum of business transaction is speedily shifting online.”
“We are not yet there but with the current level of consciousness, we are on our way there. What we need to do next is to extend the education to other parts of the country because at the moment, the major bulk of the online business is still in Lagos and then some gradually move to Abuja. But we need to also cover other parts of the country, because they also have viable potential. Cities like Enugu, Port Harcourt, Ibadan, Benin are all huge potential market that demands reasonable attention. For us at OLX, when the time is right, we would definitely roll out something big in these cities,” he added.
He further explained that, “In 2014, a lot of new ways of doing things would play out. Not that the old ways would be completely phased out but this is year that will evolve lots of changes in the way of doing things. 2014 is a year that all of us in this industry are looking forward to, it is a year that we will not just compete against each other but also look out for each other.” Also speaking on startups in the industry and their challenges, he noted that the problem with startup is lack of original idea.
“It’s like someone seeing that Coca-Cola is a successful product in the market and then goes ahead to create a related brand thinking it would be as successful. He would have forgotten that the creators of the Coca-Cola brand had gone through the journey process of creating that brand and had made series of mistakes and corrected them along that journey.
So in Nigeria, a lot of people still think that if they design a website, display some products, get a little store as a warehouse, then they would become successful e-commerce retailers. They forget that there is a lot that goes into it.  You know, the average Nigerian does not want to use his brain, he just wants to copy what the next guy has done.
The entry into this market is beyond coming together as fresh graduates and building a website, there is a lot more to it. And that would come in the way of original idea. Even if there would be some replication of an idea, it could be in a very creative way and the difference could be in just the demography that you serve.
For instance, what Jumia is doing, someone else could choose to do that but carve a demographic niche that he could serve efficiently instead of trying to target the entire market like Jumia and losing out to the competition.”