Nigeria’s Gloo.ng has dropped consumer online retail and pivoted to Business-to-Business e-procurement with Gloopro as its new name. Gloopro will supply large and medium corporates with everything ranging from desks to toilet paper.
D.O. Olusanyo, the CEO of Gloopro said that the new platform will generate revenue on a monthly fee structure and a percentage on goods delivered.
Gloo.ng raised around $1 million in seed capital. The new platform, Gloopro is also in the process of raising its Series A round. “The startup looks to expand outside Nigeria on that raise, ‘before the end of next year’, said Olusanya.
“Gloo.ng’s shift to B2B electronic commerce was prompted by Nigeria’s 2016 economic slump and customer request”, he said. An existing client, Unilever requested an e-procurement solution in 2017. “We observed that the unit economics of e-procurement was far better than consumer e-commerce” said Olusanya.
In Nigeria, which happens to be Africa’s most populous nation with the highest number of online shoppers according to a recent UNCTAD report, several notable consumer digital sales startups have failed to launch.
The country is home to Jumia, the continent’s first e-commerce startup and serves as an unofficial leader for e-commerce startup activity in Africa.
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“The old brand Gloo.ng, is going to be rested and shut down completely. The corporate name will be PayMente Limited with the brand name Gloopro,” Olusanya said. Gloopro describes itself as a “secure cloud based enterprise e-procurement and commerce platform for corporate purchasing”.
“It makes procurement transparent and secure. A lot of companies in Nigeria still use paper invoices and there are some shenanigans,” he said.
Olusanya believes the company can compete with other global e-procurement providers such as SAP Ariba and GT-Nexus, by “leveraging on sourcing and last-mile delivery experience in Nigeria” and expertise from working around local requirements in Africa. Other clients include Uber Nigeria, Cars45, LaFarge and Coca Cola.
Gloopro expects to hit $4 million in revenue by the end of the year and the company could reach $100 million over the course of its international expansion into countries like South Africa, Kenya, Morocco, Egypt and the Ivory Coast, according to Olusanya.
From the Gloopro interface, customers can order, pay for and coordinate delivery of office supplies across multiple locations. The product also produces procurement analytics and allows companies to designate users and permissions. It will improve transparency and efficiency in the purchasing process.