Kilimall was founded in Kenya in 2014 by a former Huawei executive. The word Kilimall comes from Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, which means that Kilimall hopes to become the number one e-commerce platform in Africa. In order to solve the problem of online payment in Africa, the founder of Kilimal took advantage of his experience in Huawei as a secure payment gateway, and built a fully closed-loop e-commerce system in Africa that combines the platform with a self-built payment system and a self-built logistics system, fundamentally solving the two biggest pain points of African e-commerce – how to get things there? How to get the money back?
As of the beginning of 2019, Kilimall has registered more than 10 million buyers, with an average daily active volume of more than 1.5 million people, a repurchase rate of 40%, and a customer unit price of about US$25. Although Kilimal is a platform founded by the Chinese themselves, in order to implement the platform’s localization development strategy in Africa, Kilimall did not officially recruit Chinese sellers until 2018, four years after its establishment. So far, there are only more than 4,000 Chinese sellers, and the products are very limited. The products on the platform are far from meeting the rapidly growing user purchasing needs. Therefore, sellers who settle in early will have greater room for development on the platform.
As of mid-2019, Kilimall has opened 3 sites to Chinese sellers, namely Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda, and both individual and corporate users can apply to settle in.