The e-commerce space in Kenya is a fast growing business with more shops taking up the trade to either complement their physical presence or switch over to the online trade completely. As exciting as it is that as a country we are embracing the digital life, the e-commerce space is far from perfect.
We have seen customers complain of fake goods being delivered, late deliveries, items disappearing from the cart and even painful customer care experiences. One company that has been at the forefront of the Kenyan e-commerce space both in positive and negative lighting is Jumia.
Jumia has inspired many others to join the trade and while we’re yet to know the fate of newcomers like Masoko, there’s a new baby about to join the crip, Jamboshop.
UAE-backed Jamboshop wants to redefine the online shopping experience by putting all its efforts on the customer experience. “We’re giving the Kenyan seller and consumer a technology platform that will redefine shopping using A.I related pieces such as profiling and predictive analysis,” said Sanjay Pathak the company’s Country Manager.
Jamboshop’s ambition to provide an all-round shopping platform that equally serves merchants and customers is focused on delivering items on time and providing order tracking services to give the customer the power of knowing where their product is.
Logistics Support
Mr Sanjay also told Techweez that the platform would offer small merchants logistics support, that is, the merchant would either drop off the goods at the company’s warehouse and Jamboshop would take care of the delivery or the company would go get the goods directly from the merchant and then deliver to the customer.
The country manager also said that Jamboshop has partnered with Aramex who will be handling the delivery logistics, with the promise of same-day delivery within Nairobi and 48 hour delivery for the rest of Kenya.
Merchants + Customers
Aside from a proper order tracking system, Jamboshop hopes to digitize the entire merchant onboarding process to minimize the length that it takes a merchant to have their products listed on the site. On the customer side, the company would ensure sufficient stock of electronics and apparel which they say, according to their research, are the most sort after goods online.
Jamboshop is slated for a July launch, but until then, we just hope that this is the one that puts us out of our online shopping misery.
