Efritin, a general classifieds site run by Saltside Technologies will be run remotely after the Nigeria office was shut and staff retrenched as TechMoran reported earlier.
In an interview with Aim Group, Saltside Technologies CEO Nils Hammar confirmed that Efritin staff of 50 had been retrenched and the firm will be run out of Nigeria from Saltiside’s various bases. Saltside runs sites in Bangladesh, Ghana, Nigeria and Sri Lanka and has its HQ in Gothenburg,Sweden and operational bases in Bangalore, India and Dubai.
Efritin will remain online with zero staff in Nigeria just as our sources had indicated but the site will be run from outside the country and not shut totally allowing users in Nigeria to continue buying and selling on the site.
Tonaton Ghana will not be affected by this shift.
”What we are doing, is to sharply reduce our investment in Nigeria, which means that all staff has had to leave.
“But, it does not mean the site will close. Efritin will be run from a distance. We have teams in several locations which will help out,” Hammar told Aim Group.
Hammar added that Saltside wanted to find evidence that the investment will be worthwhile and they made a honest attempt to make it work in Nigeria.
“We saw many promising signs, but at the same time (we noted) it was not the right time to focus and invest big in Nigeria. A marketplace is a micro cosmos of the general economy. If the economy as a whole slows down, then the classifieds can be hurt. The economy of Nigeria has been in a bad shape the last couple of years.
“Another aspect of Nigeria, is that the data cost is very high, which makes it tougher to run our kind of business there,” Hammar told the consultancy firm insisting that the move had nothing to do with the alleged fraud accusations.