Nigeria’s Giddiphones, wants to be biggest classified’s platform for phones in Africa, serving the continent’s growing mobile phone population.
Founded this year by Babayemi Olulana, a former CTO of a very popular online community called nextstarz.com,co-founder and Lead Engineer of Kidiba,and developer of the viral youtube rss app; and Omoyeni, the head of marketing with extensive experience in voice over, print and online media and also an Editor at Pink Bizness a business blog showcasing women Entrepreneurs, the team aim to be the biggest platform in the country helping users sale phones to each other.
Speaking to TechMoran, Olulana said, “I think the successes that the likes of Cheki.com and Jobberman has recorded in this space is testament to the readiness of the Nigerian Consumer for classifieds in vertical markets; Jobberman.com which targets a niche market has a higher Alexa ranking in Nigeria than olx.com that is an all category classified platform.”
Olulana says most Nigerian Tech Entrepreneurs are in Swan Mode; in the sense that looking at a swan from the surface you won’t notice any effort it makes to glide over the pond, but when you go underwater you will see it kicking furiously.
“A lot of Nigerian Entrepreneurs are really working hard doing all that needs to be done in the trenches despite the limiting factors. I believe that in coming months we will see a rapid migration from swan mode to a more accelerated mode where the value of the work they have put into their startups can be seen, received and appreciated.” Olulana says. “I have seen first hand; Nigerian Entrepreneurs build and Scale to production with means that Their Silicon Valley counterparts use to build mockups.I Think better access to early stage funding and a Rapid reduction in internet costs will see more young Nigerian Techies innovating better.”
Currently bootsrapped, Giddiphones is considering taking on investment. At the moment, the startup’s primary competition comes from sites such as olx.com and TradeStable but addressing a niche gives them a competitive advantage over others. The firm also says its inventory is better categorized than olx.com.