Sit-down With OLX Country Manager Peter Ndiangu’i

OLX has generated a lot of interest since entering the Kenyan classifieds market. I sat down with Peter Ndiangu’i, OLX Kenya Country Manager, to get a sense of what OLX has achieved so far and what plans they have for the future.

1. What do you love about your job?

I love making a difference! Our mission at OLX is to bring people together for a win-win transaction. Kenya is my home and it’s great to be part of making OLX a success here.

2. Since entering the Kenyan market, what challenges has OLX faced?

The greatest challenge has been behavioural one. Kenyans are generally wary of transactions made online, but we’ve been working to change this mindset.

3. OLX is in other markets, what (if any) makes the Kenyan market stand out?

The Kenyan market stands out  because it is becoming an innovation hub of OLX in many ways. We’ve been designing communications that are authentic and localized as well as introducing new forms of spreading the classifieds message.

As a market, we also see different items being put up for sale on the Kenyan platform that are not in other markets. A great example is the quail phenomena that saw us receive hundreds of quails and quail eggs classifieds as the quail market started to crash.

4. There’s been a lot of misinformation about OLX, what are you doing to educate the public and earn public trust?

We currently do not think that the consumers are misinformed, perhaps uninformed on certain aspects of how to trade online. We are currently tackling this by driving user education on how to trade safely online.

The launch of the “Kaa Ridhoo” campaign was a watershed moment and a first step in Kenya by an e-commerce in aggressively driving consumer education on how to trade safely on the internet. We have lined up other forms of partnerships to support consumer safety on our platform .

5. What makes you stand out from your competition?

We are passionate about helping people trade with each other, we are a fun brand and we are truly local.

6.  The classifieds ad market is prone to fraud. How does OLX tackle this challenge?

We have been executing a number of initiatives to tackle fraud based on a 4 pronged approach: strengthening the platform listing rules, employing standardized patterns to recognize and block fraudsters, educating the public on how to trade safely and partnerships with law enforcement agents.

7. What in your opinion is the future of the classifieds ad market especially in Kenya and what role will OLX play?

The classifieds market in Kenya is in its infancy. The Internet came in at the right time to expand the classifieds movement. If you look at the 2 major dailies, none of them had classifieds as one of the highest revenue drivers in their revenue mix. This is the opposite of the US and European markets where classifieds revenue accounted to almost 50 % of the newspaper revenue mix. In a sense the Internet technology to classifieds is somewhat similar to what the GSM technology did to the expansion of the telephony market in Kenya.

Classifieds are over 500 years old dating back during the period when people wrote on stone tablets. The core reason why people use classifieds has not changed . The only thing that has changed is the platform on which the classifieds ads are written on or accessed from.

From stone tablets before 17^th century to papers in the aftermath of printing press to the web at the advent of commercial internet and world wide web , the “job to be done” by the users of classifieds has remained one and the same whether for a seller or a buyer, “help me get a good deal!” So therefore, I see an industry whose growth will be turbocharged by the rising internet penetration powered by lower cost of broadband and low-cost smartphones.

While at these drivers, the internet of things (IOT) , presents myriad opportunities as what we call “mobile” becomes blurred with the introduction of another range of internet-enabled devises like watches and Googles. And as Classifieds platforms extend their distribution to these platforms, we will see the usage of them grow even faster in Kenya.

OLX intends to play a key role in these future innovations as it seeks to cement its position in the Kenyan market as the leading countrywide but highly localized virtual market place.

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