Comments on: Maduqa: Online Shops for Every Kenyan

By: Maduqa, a leader in business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce in East Africa | Clement Nyirenda's blog world

Sat, 24 Apr 2010 03:55:21 +0000

[…] have payment gateways. You are required to email he owner in order to buy. But in his comment on Hash’s review of Maduqa, Kachwanya, who is one of the founders, has promised that the payment system is going to be up very […]

By: Sean Murphy

Sean Murphy — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 17:35:52 +0000

Minor design criticisms and bugs aside I like the Maduqa idea very much. I also agree that the classifieds should be dropped. And yes this is a good example of taking a proven concept and adapting it. It also shows good market awareness on the part of @Kachwanya and @Mulutu Jackson.

With approx. 12 % penetration now (remember it was just 1.4 % in 2004) and continued rapid growth expected over the next 4 years, the Kenyan web is still in the emerging phase. The opportunities that existed in North America and Western Europe when Internet penetration was at a similar level (and exploding) are the same ones that exist in East Africa today. Just sprinkle on a bit of web 2.0 and add a healthy dash of mobile and generate traffic, traffic, traffic.

A beef I have with East African web entrepreneurs is that many of them feel a need to “overinnovate”. I know 3 Kenyan groups developing sophisticated iPhone apps but none developing a top notch Kenyan sports portal or local free webmail solution. How come? And is Maduqa really the only company offering turnkey webshops for small Kenyan businesses? Again, how come?

When you have a market with large numbers of new users coming coming on line at the same time, that’s a valuable captive audience and a pool of similar needs. New web users want to use email, connect with friends, locate information, consume news, find out about people, places, events, products and opportunities. Business owners want the same things, but they also want to be found. There are plenty of gaps in the emerging web marketplace. It’s up to Kenyan web entrepreneurs to plug them them with local solutions.

Maduqa seems to be filling one need, but where are the clever local web
directories, local listings and reviews sites, local free web email sites,
thematic portals, online ad servers, etc? Who’s going to develop them?

By: kachwanya

kachwanya — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 13:54:19 +0000

Thanks guys for the feedback, much appreciated
@John we have taken note of that
@James, we are working on the Payment System, it is going to be up very soo
@nicholas looking on the way to make it less clattered.

By: Guy

Guy — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 21:49:49 +0000

I like the idea. We need more local content. I also like that you removed the second scrolling bar of featured shops . All that movement was confusing and distracted from the rest of the page. The missing pictures are killing the look of the website. Maybe your design should not rely so much on user provided data. Other than that it’s a good job. Maybe one cool feature to add is customer reviews or scoring. This could be pretty tricky to get right, even yelp is now facing problems. Is the website hosted in Kenya ? Good Luck.

By: Mulutu Jackson

Mulutu Jackson — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 11:14:31 +0000

Thanks all for the comments.
Indeed the home page looks disjointed. I have been having changes regularly in the last few weeks. I am currently working on a solid look and feel/ design for the home page that will be up by next week. In addition, we are also working towards having longterm partnerships with some shop owners so that they guarantee the delivery of items bought from their online shops; this will maintain our integrity as an online e-commerce portal. Any suggestions are welcome anytime.

maduqa.com Admin

By: Kenya:Â InnovationÂ inÂ E-Commerce

Kenya:Â InnovationÂ inÂ E-Commerce — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 08:28:21 +0000

[…] Apr, 2010 0 Comments Erik Hersman (@whiteafrican) takes a look at a new Kenyan e-commerce startup called Maduqa that aims to give any […]

By: nicholas rukaria

nicholas rukaria — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 16:45:12 +0000

Great Post, Great idea (http://www.maduqa.com/), though too clattered as it has been said, the impatient will barely give it a min.

By: James

James — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 07:26:50 +0000

What I love most with the site, is the composite nature. It has everything for everyone, which means that the shops as well as the classifieds are accessible to the clients.

My worry is the Payment system!

By: John Karanja

John Karanja — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 15:26:04 +0000

Great one from @kachwanya i also recommend Static HTML pages instead of dynamic URLS (helps with google page rank) and ecommerce/mcommerce (Mpesa) integration for the shops.

Its possible.

Thanks Hash for this one.

By: Jackson

Jackson — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 12:15:43 +0000

Thanks BigBoss, I will check on the search function; must have messed up with a few variables when doing the last update. Thanks, let me know of any error you encounter or any suggestions.

The Admin