Konga.com further cemented its position as Nigeria’s largest online mall as it successfully delivered Nigeria’s biggest online shopping day with its version of the Global Black Friday sales tagged ‘Yakata’. Yakata, a Nigerian colloquial term meaning “final” or “completely.” Konga’s Yakata sales started on Thursday and ended by midnight on Black Friday giving shoppers more time to shop.
Konga’s Yakata sales pioneered and localized the concept of Black Friday in the Nigerian ecommerce industry. The first edition held in 2013 and was a big success. However, the 2014 sales delivered even more outstanding results. On Friday, Konga.com saw a record breaking 1440% year on year increase in online revenue.
The CEO and founder of Konga.com, Mr. Sim Shagaya disclosed that at its peak, Konga was processing N50 million worth of orders every hour and that Konga sold 500% more items in the two days of Yakata than it did in all of 2012.
The successes for Yakata came behind a lot of hard work on the part of Konga.com. Over the last 1 year, the company made the strategic decision to invest heavily in technology and other operational infrastructure. A very different strategy from that of other Nigerian ecommerce companies who have focused more on advertising.
The company focused on enhancing its website and other operating systems. Another key move by the company was the creation of its own logistics and delivery arm called KExpress which now ensures that the company can continue to efficiently deliver the growing number of orders it receives every day.
Konga.com also opened up its marketplace to small and medium business owners in the course of the year. Today, Konga’s marketplace platform boasts of thousands of SME owners who have stores and are actively trading on the site. Konga’s SellerHQ currently has more than double the number of products available on the site of its closest competitor.
The choices Konga.com has made in the past one year have clearly been the right ones. Unlike its closest online retailer competitor, the Konga.com website experienced no down-time during the Yakata sales, despite the incredible number of concurrent visits to the site during that period. The 2014 sales was record breaking for Konga across different metrics.
According to Sim Shagaya, “We received thousands of orders within the first few hours of launching Yakata. The orders poured in from virtually every state in Nigeria and interestingly from several other countries as well. Following the Yakata sale, almost 100,000 items are now being shipped all over Nigeria.
Further remarking on the growth of Ecommerce in Nigeria, Shagaya said, “Over 40% of the people who shopped had never bought online before. With a significant part of Konga’s orders generated from mobile devices it shows that Ecommerce is really growing fast in Nigeria and it is a clear pointer that mobile is the way Nigerians will shop online in the future.
Mr. Shagaya expressed his deep gratitude to all customers that took part in the Yakata Sales saying, “Because of our customers, Konga and many small and medium size retailers that sell on our platform witnessed sales volumes that were simply staggering. We, as a people, have made a great leap forward towards the development of e-commerce in Nigeria and larger Africa”.
Some of the hottest deals recorded during the period were Haier Thermocool 3KVA remote control generator which sold at a remarkable N53, 750 at a discount of almost 60 percent; and the Lenovo A3300 Tablet which sold at N18, 000 instead of N30, 000.