Co-Founded by Babangida Umar, Joshua Riebelle, and Damola Ogunbambo in 2018, Shopkite Merchant is an inventory management mobile app that helps neighbourhood stores get reports of daily sales and keep track of inventory. It is affordable, more efficient, and takes up zero real estate in retail outlets (supermarkets, provision stores, and pharmacies).
Name: Shopkite
Website: https://shopkite.com.ng
Co-founder and CEO: Joshua Riebelle
Co-founders: Babangida Umar and Damola Ogunbambo
Tell us about the history of Shopkite, its founders, and goals
There are over 1.3 million neighbourhood stores (supermarkets, provision stores, and pharmacies) across Nigeria. There is a peculiarity with over 90% of them. They don’t have an efficient and affordable way to track their daily sales and inventory. The options available to them are expensive and take up a lot of space in their relatively small stores.
Shopkite was birthed in a bid to solve this problem. The startup started out as an idea in 2017 and at the end of 2018, we had a working prototype to start with. Co-Founded by Babangida Umar, Joshua Riebelle, and Damola Ogunbambo, our goal is to be on the checklist of necessary resources for retail business owners especially in the FMCG and pharmaceutical industry.
Shopkite Merchant is an inventory management mobile app that helps neighbourhood stores get reports of daily sales and keep track of inventory. It is affordable, more efficient, and takes up zero real estate in retail outlets (supermarkets, provision stores, and pharmacies).
What does this mean to a store owner (merchant)?
- They know the total value of their store in split seconds. This wasn’t possible for the majority before now. We like to call it the “account balance” of your store.
- They know when products are low in stock and they get reminders for products about to expire.
- They can scan product barcodes with their phone’s camera and print point-of-sale receipts for customers – Watch this 50 seconds video for a demonstration of this – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aGHKPfat1c
- They get real-time notifications of what’s happening in their store irrespective of where they are in the world.
- They can now access soft loans for SMEs because they have a basic record-keeping system with actual sale numbers.
- The icing on the cake for a merchant is that they can own a mini-website where their customers can shop from and make payment. https://shopkite.com.ng/lagos (A few of our merchants are here).
What sets your startup apart from its competitors?
It has over 20,000 preloaded SKUs (stock-keeping units) of popular FMCG and pharmaceutical products. This makes the on-boarding process seamless for merchants. You scan and add easily, no need to type out product names. It’s affordable and more efficient. Typically, point of sale systems will cost N150,000 northward.
Shopkite saves you over 90% of this cost. Also, you get to connect both your offline and online sales in one place. Genuine testimonial from a merchant who has used Shopkite for one year.
Our ‘secret sauce’ is:
Simplicity. We change the typical mindset of an inventory management tool being a complex to use solution with our simple implementation.
What challenges, if any, is Shopkite grappling with?
Growth. Like any start-up, getting the word out there to the relevant stakeholders who will love Shopkite is one of our current challenges.
What’s the one piece of advice you’d give to other entrepreneurs just starting out:
Never give up. Be absolutely sure of what you want to do and continue at it.
We are a team of young and energetic minds looking to make a major impact in the retail sector of our immediate environment.
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