Though Kenya is the world leader in mobile money, e-commerce is just beginning to take shape in the region with Kenya as a starting point. These are facts presented by Dealfish an online marketplace in Kenya at the March edition of Mobile Monday Kenya that was held on the 21 March at the iHub – Mobile Monday is a network of professionals in the mobile industry, currently active in about 115 countries and meeting up on a selected Monday in each of the countries. Dealfish currently operates across several East, Central and West African countries including Cameroon , Cote d’Ivoire , Ghana , Tanzania , Nigeria , RDC and Uganda. The firm is owned by MIH Holdings, a South African firm running several online businesses including an ISP and Kalahari Ads, a South African online market place similar to Dealfish. MIH is in turn owned by South African Naspers which has stakes in DSTV, M-Net, Mxit and mail.ru amongst other firms. The region in which the firm is currently operating in has a combined mobile subscriber base of 161,495,038 subscribers and 74,562,993 Internet users. In line with this, the firm has a vision to be the largest enabler of online trading throughout East and West Africa, allowing users to buy and sell goods, post and find employment, as well as buy, sell, and rent property throughout Africa.

Moses Kemibaro, Dealfish’s regional manager for East Africa says that online market places offer different advantages including transparency in pricing of products from different sellers, a larger reach of audience and ease of use for all users. Challenges however remain in the fragmentation presented in the form of many online market places, lack of trust due to various online scams an d regional inexperience in the consumer to consumer trade.
“Many African businesses and individuals cannot afford to build their own web sites. The cost of doing business offline is still costly,” he says, adding that the cost of connectivity is affordable and a good business enabler as it results in online marker places been inexpensive.
According to Kemibaro, online market places are operating on the notion that just building an online market place would attract users. This is why print has remained dominant – due to lack of a focused brand.
Dealfish works on computers, mobile web and will soon be launching an SMS service. Kemibaro adds that Dealfish has deployed a high quality of moderation to assist in fraud prevention.
The firm has a sizable workforce in Nigeria and Kenya. In Kenya, Dealfish has aggressive multi-channel campaigns that have seen it rolling out adverts on both InMobi and AdMob on the mobile platform, online ads for PC and a massive outdoor campaign that has seen Dealfish from massive outdoor billboards to picture frame sized in private indoor settings.
The site boasts more than 26,000 free listings in the less than six months that it has been in existence. Dealfish does not currently charge for listings and says that their major focus is on the customer. This is through various service enhancements including SMS functionality, Android and Ovi apps which it plans to launch by the second half of this year.
Site analytics presented by Dealfish showed that the site was now handling more than 250,000 unique visitors monthly with each visitor spending an average of 5 minutes and viewing an average 5 items. Dealfish serves more than 2 million impressions monthly and is ranked 17th in Kenya by Alexa.com.
Mobile users account for 50% of visits, with Nokia, Samsung and Android leading in terms of Mobile Operating Systems (OS). Sony, Symbian and iPhone follow in at 4th, 5th and 6th positions respectively with LG, Motorola , Blackberry and the iPad rounding off the top 10 mobile OS through which users access Dealfish.
Integration of postings on Dealfish is done from various sources including notice board posting in malls, partnerships with various agents such as real estate agents and user submissions amongst others.
“A lot of user education and hand holding is required,” says Kemibaro, adding that experimentation has been a key process in Dealfish at this point.