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Konga buoys Nigeria’s $10b eCommerce sector

By Adeyemi Adepetun
26 October 2016   |   2:39 am
Konga, an online shopping mall, is rolling out an extensive warehouse infrastructure project across Nigeria to service thousands more online merchants.
Konga

Konga

Konga, an online shopping mall, is rolling out an extensive warehouse infrastructure project across Nigeria to service thousands more online merchants.

The new move, unveiled on Monday in Lagos and tagged: ‘Fulfilled by Konga’ will enable thousands of Nigerian online sellers, who currently sell through Konga, to store their merchandise in the warehouses and subsequently have the orders delivered by Konga’s in-house fulfillment team.

With the new initiative, the eCommerce firm said it was set to reduce merchant order processing times from 40hours to three hours, which is about 90 per cent reduction.

Already, the eCommerce sector in Nigeria is estimated to be currently worth $10 billion and it has been projected to hit $13 billion in 2018 according to a new report.

Konga claimed that the ‘Fulfilled by Konga’ has been introduced to significantly reduce delivery times for customers across the country, and to make order fulfillment for its 60,000 merchants easier and more reliable.

At present, merchants have up to three days to drop off their items at a distribution site, where Konga’s team will go on to deliver the item on their behalf. However, with this unveiling, items can be selected and shipped on the same day. For Lagos deliveries, Konga said items can be delivered within 24 hours; a service that has been in beta for some months and has already seen a 98.5 per cent success rate.

Konga’s flagship distribution centre in Lagos is an ultra-modern 60,000 sqft warehouse and houses over 200,000 items. With the launch of ‘Fulfilled by Konga’, plans are now in place to double its size to 120,000 sq ft in 2017, as well as country-wide infrastructure project to build fulfillment centres in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, and Port Harcourt.

Speaking on the launch of ‘Fulfilled by Konga’, Chief Executive Officer, Shola Adekoya, said the firm has cemented a name for itself as an engine of Commerce & Trade in Africa, and the infrastructure project they are currently deploying has been developed to act as a catalyst for the entire e-commerce market in Nigeria.

“Fulfilled by Konga’ is a dynamic solution that makes the process of doing business easier and more effective for our tens of thousands of merchants, whilst our customers will benefit from far shorter waiting times for their orders.

“Warehousing and distribution is notoriously challenging in Nigeria; we have set ourselves a Herculean task of building a network of technologically advanced warehousing sites across Nigeria, that will bring speedy, cost efficient sales solutions for our growing number of merchants looking to do business online, and will act as a considerable boost to Nigeria’s growing ecommerce sector.”

With Nigeria currently ranking 90th in the world Logistic Performance Index, Konga claimed that its recent activities will further improve performance in this sector.

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