Kenyan-based venture Jiji has announced full acquisition of Ghanaian-based classifieds heavyweight Tonaton. The company is the enterprise behind the Jiji app, a leading application by downloads in the Shopping category on the Google Play Store in Nigeria, and currently the highest-rated e-commerce app in the country.
Jiji already holds leadership positions in Kenya and Ghana. Additionally, the marketplace operates in Uganda and Tanzania, with some 12 million users making up a monthly active base among all geographies. The amount of the transaction was undisclosed.
Tonaton, a subsidiary of Saltside, was the main Jiji competitor in Ghana at the time of its purchase by Jiji earlier last month.
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Jiji and Tonaton users will now have access to a larger network of buyers and sellers, which will significantly increase trading opportunity and aggregate user base in what is seen as a major market consolidation in the classifieds sector.
“With Jiji’s move to a large-scale presence in the African continent, and following its acquisition of OLX in 2019 and its recent acquisition of Cars45 in 2021, the deal sees the company well-positioned to tap into a larger share of the African market. With OLX and Cars45 under Jiji’s umbrella, we are getting close to becoming a regional leader in classifieds. Jiji is the largest e-commerce company in Africa by GMV (more than $10 billion), leading in small to high-involvement key categories such as cars and real estate,” said Jiji CEO and co-founder Anton Volianskyi.
“We hold the rank of the best app in e-commerce proudly with a rating of 4.5/5, a gauge of satisfaction from our millions and millions of daily users. The picture is much larger. Our goal is to build a company that gives every user in Africa the opportunity to buy goods cheaper and reduce environmental impact through what is effectively a developing lateral economy built on a safe and productive recirculation of valuable goods. We are currently creating at full-tilt hundreds of thousands of new jobs throughout Africa, which allows us to effectively address and help remedy gaps in both unemployment and frictional unemployment.”
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With the deep penetration of Tonaton in the Ghanaian classifieds sector as the go-to platform and factoring in its leading position in Ghana’s transactional used auto market, Jiji has secured a strong base towards streamlining their services to a projected (SSA) market of 400 million-plus users – a market in which it currently sits as the leader in several key countries such as Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and Uganda, amounting to over $10 billion in gross merchandise value.
“Jiji achieved great success with only a limited presence in Ghana; more than 2 million people visit our website each month. Over the past eight years, Tonatonhas built a strong team of more than 70 people that will hugely contribute to our future growth. The combination of Jiji’s technology and talent with that of Tonaton will help ensure our continued success in the fast-paced e-commerce industry,” said Yuliy Shenfeld, Jiji’s Director of African Operations.
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