Pan-African venture capital firms 4DX Ventures and Janngo Capital led a $2.65 million pre-seed round for Maka, an e-commerce platform for African fashion and cosmetics products. Additional investors include Wolt executives, Palm Drive Capital, and angel investor Jonathan Shipman, who founded EVP and was a founding member of Twitch.
Co-founder and CEO Diana Owusu-Kyereko established Maka in 2021 as an interactive social commerce platform that lets consumers find things that suit their tastes scalable through live try-on hauls, reviews, and user-generated material from makers and buyers. Owusu-Kyereko was the former CEO of Jumia Ghana and the former CCO of Jumia Kenya before launching the e-commerce company. She explained that the idea for Maka came up due to her effort to find inclusive fashion inspiration when she was in Ghana during the epidemic. Owusu-Kyereko was a typical repatriate who often flew to London for shopping. But when she realized she couldn’t do that while travel was limited, she started looking into other options. She asked acquaintances for ideas, and they pointed her toward popular websites and influencers.
Owusu-Kyereko claimed to have been curious about why visiting pricey shops or purchasing on websites like Instagram was advised. To learn more, she polled hundreds of individuals in Ghana and Nigeria to find their favorite places to buy. It was clear that shopping was difficult and that there was a need for improvement. She said that out of all the buying techniques she had investigated, Instagram stood out as the “Wild Wild West,” where one never knows what they will receive, payment in advance is sometimes necessary, and return or refund alternatives are few. On the other hand, traditional markets could be stressful even if they provide a personal touch, making personal shoppers necessary. Payment and logistical issues were another problem with online buying from stores like ASOS and Shein.
Six months after leaving Jumia, Owusu-Kyereko founded Maka. This e-commerce platform caters to Gen Zers and millennials in Africa and is relatively unexplored for fashion firms. E-commerce penetration increased from 13% in 2017 to 28% in 2021, reaching 334 million consumers, thanks to the younger generation’s strong embrace of technology. With a particular emphasis on the fashion industry and the creative economy, Maka’s rapid growth offers significant prospects for establishing connections with a broader range of customers around the continent. Maka’s platform recognizes and resolves two core issues: artists’ difficulty monetizing their influence and a trust issue in the purchasing process. Maka uses videos to link consumers with reliable artists to address the trust factor. We have shown that video is an effective technique for establishing confidence in low-trust markets. It does three things well: it builds relationships with the buyer, reviewer, and user, and it promotes conversion. When consumers see products from a creator they respect, it boosts their confidence to purchase. However, the firm first thought of creating a marketplace where creators show items and brands, merchants, customers, and creators coexist. It did discover, however, that consumers value the certainty that what they see is what they receive, making the most of their little discretionary cash on worthwhile purchases. Essentially, each consumer can create.
One noteworthy feature of the site is its review feature, which enables users to provide comments via 30- to 60-second videos after making a purchase. These reviews impact other users’ purchasing choices by offering insightful information. The CEO claims that this feature has significantly influenced reviewers and buyers, strengthening the feeling of community and trust on the Maka platform. The business also offers a rewards program to encourage consumers to submit these video evaluations. Customers and creators get paid N500 (50 cents) each time they publish a review; according to Owusu-Kyereko, each Maka creator creates around seven videos. Creators get points for every video review they receive and any purchases made by others based on their recommendations. In addition, artists may get extra points by downloading their Maka evaluations and sharing them on other social networking sites. You may use these points to shop on the site by converting them into cash.
Maka says that since its launch, It has recorded over 500,000 downloads; Maka got these figures via the company’s original strategy of interacting with artists in live sessions.
Nevertheless, since launching its user-generated content model two months ago, the two-year-old firm has produced over 2,000 reviews. What is ahead for the business? Maka would utilize the money, according to Owusu-Kyereko, to grow its workforce and operational development, improve its technology, and strengthen its position in Nigeria.
