MoBiashara profile

It allows consumers to search for products from multiple providers and make purchases on their mobile phone using local payment providers. MoBiashara partners with trusted brands, whose distributors and retailers can upload their inventory onto the platform, ensuring that consumers are buying genuine products. The platform brings the convenience of price comparison shopping of the web to basic feature phone users who lack reliable access to the internet. For rural users, this can translate into travel savings as they can be certain that the product they have purchased will be waiting for them when they arrive in town. This is in contrast to the traditional experience where a farmer may travel into town to purchase inputs only to find out that they are sold out. To date, the platform is being used to facilitate the purchase of transportation services and agricultural products, with planned expansion into pharmaceuticals in the near future. In Nigeria, where MoBiashara was initially launched, the firm Notore is using it to enable farmers to shop for and purchase fertilizers from its accredited retailers. Retailers use the same platform to update their inventories via SMS in real time. MoBiashara was developed by SlimTrader, a private e-commerce firm based in the U.S. SlimTrader charges a small percentage of the transaction value, which is charged to the merchant. The platform is currently being piloted in Nigeria, reaching several thousand users. The business model used by MoBiashara is similar to that of Amazon Marketplace, where SlimTrader generates revenue on each transaction conducted. While it is still too early to assess the impact of MoBiashara, anecdotal feedback reveals that farmers using the service are willing to pay the small transaction fee to guarantee the purchase price before having to travel into the nearest town to make their purchase. After the pilot ends next year, SlimTrader plans to conduct more detailed interviews with farmers using the service to better assess its impact.