Jiji, an African focused digital classified platform has raised $21 million in Series C and C-1 funding from six investors, led by Knuru Capital.
Jiji has offices in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Uganda, and Tanzania and provides thousands of buyers and sellers with an avenue to meet and exchange goods and services.
Founded in Lagos in 2014 by Anton Wolyansky and Ukrainian entrepreneur Vladimir Mnogoletniy, Jiji plans to use the $21 million to increase the overall number of buyers, sellers, and transactions on its site.
Part of the investment will be used to upgrade the platform to create more listings and faster matching in the area of real-estate.
For Mnogoletniy, he said: “We are the largest marketplace in Africa where people can sell pretty much anything…We are like a combination of eBay and Craigslist for Africa.”
The classifieds site has two million listings on its Africa platforms and hit eight million unique monthly users in 2018, per company stats.
In April this year, Jiji acquired the assets of Naspers owned online marketplace OLX in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. OLX was Jiji’s main competitor before the acquisition.
Jiji’s top three categories for revenues and listings (in order) are vehicle sales, real estate, and electronics sales (namely mobile phones).
With the recent funding, the company’s total capital raised from 2014 to 2019 comes to $50 million.
For now, Jiji doesn’t have plans for country expansion or company purchases.
“Maybe at some point we will consider more acquisitions, but for the time being we’d like to focus on those five markets,” Mnogoletniy said.
