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In recent times, there has been a high demand for the swift delivery of goods and services in Nigeria, and due to the ease that online shopping applications bring; the high demand has given rise to the use of such applications for dispatch services.
Rahima Dokaji, Kano
The demand for e-commerce was further enhanced during the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, where lockdown and Covid-19 safety protocols made it stressful for people to go to markets and shopping malls. This and safety reasons gave rise to its popularity in Nigeria, especially in the north, where culture deprives women of many outdoor activities.
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Building on this, Saratu Buhari, a Kano-based e-commerce entrepreneur, is changing the narrative of business in northern Nigeria, especially in Kano State where culturally, women are considered “the sit at home gender”, or in rare cases take simple home business or teaching jobs.
In this encounter with Daily Trust Saturday, Saratu said she ventured into the e-commerce business to digitize markets within Nigeria; tackle the problem of disorganized and disoriented marketing using the ever-evolving world of technology, while also creating a safe place where people feel comfortable with making purchases online, knowing that there’s standard with the product and an assurance.
On how she conceived the idea of starting the company and creating her WeKasuwa e-commerce application, she said: “because the markets we have in Nigeria are not quite formal, the part of the almost 60 per cent of the informal markets are in Nigeria, but there has been no information about the markets we have because it’s mostly cash-based. And if you notice that if a lot of people want to purchase something online, it is either they go or rely on the technology of their phones to make calls to people that they know in the market.”
“You can hardly find the local products that we use anywhere online, it is majorly disoriented. So, even in the market places you noticed that with the high penetration that we have of the internet in Nigeria, about 51 per cent of our markets do not appear online, so we decided to put our markets on that pedestal so that people at home in Kano and those outside the state can easily make their purchases.”
She further explained that seeing a lot of people from the Diaspora who want local products and have to call a relative to be able to help them go to the market or get the product and process delivery to them abroad, and the fact that commerce is not static with time, this made her decide to bring all these together in one place, to make it easy for people.
Packaging
When you talk about e-commerce, everybody have their target audience. Saratu said that: “If you look at the likes of Amazon and E-bay, they are e-Commerce platforms but they differ in a lot of aspects. They have really done a lot and paved the way for people like us to think these things are possible, but a lot of people even with the internet penetration we have, and the technology that comes with a lot of software technology, have not tackled the issues that we are having within the markets, and that is where we came in.”
Challenges and success
Every business, big or small, has its own peculiar challenges and successes and like any other entrepreneur, especially as a Northern woman in business, Hajiya Saratu narrates the challenges she encounters in the business.
“I face a lot of challenges because you know that when it comes to not just being a woman in Northern Nigeria, leaving your house to really interact with people, shocks the society. I’ve had experience in customer service for over 10 years and that experience is what I used to push the market forward. For example; people expect you to dress in a certain way because you are a business person and it’s not always like that because I don’t have to dress in the corporate sense. But the major challenge we are facing as women is really balancing your personal life and the business aspect of it. And we are still trying to find a way of balancing that.”
She said, despite these challenges, her business is thriving as she has registered over 300 shops on the Wekasua platform, and has connected over 600 buyers with their products in the first quarter of the year alone.
“Yes, we have had acceptance, as we have registered over 300 shops right now, and the market that we have started with is Singa market in Kano, and we intend to expand Wekasua outside Kano, as long as there are markets that are disorganized and disoriented. We are very happy with the way people are beginning to accept the change that we are bringing to the society,” she said.
‘Poverty reduction is my vision’
On where she hopes to take her business to, Saratu said her vision has always been to reduce poverty within the society, and her five-year target is to make sure that Wekasua becomes the place for every Nigerian to know that the market within their local vicinity is simple to access.
“We are creating that brand where we are taking away the notion from people that e-commerce is a fraudulent platform. But it is not that at all, we have made sure that it’s connected legally, with tangible easy ways of conducting day-to-day transactions,” she added.
Hajiya Saratu has big plans for her business, and is changing the Kano market, as she sees herself as the entrepreneur who will expand her business across Nigeria, and beyond and break the glass ceiling for women in business, especially those from her part of the country.
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