By Bankole Orimisan
AS part of its expansion drive, Nigeria’s local search engine, VConnect will soon be exploring market opportunities in Ghana.
VConnect, which claims to be the seventh most visited site in Nigeria, said it has listed about 950,000 businesses on its website.
According to the co-founder and General Manager of VConnect, Deepanker Rustagi the firm’s entry into the Nigerian market has left positive footprints, following its strong level of acceptance which has seen it surpassing its target by a sharp 160 per cent growth in all parameters last year, including revenue, traffic, topline among others.
Rustagi said the lack of a formal system of street numbering and unavailability of a working postal system are some of the setbacks the company experiences. He however, stated that VConnect would not rest on its oars until all SMEs in Nigeria are empowered and taken to the peak.
Meanwhile, he said the firm is already making plans towards extending its reach beyond the shores of Nigeria.
According to him, by May 2014, the firm would pitch its tent in Ghana, where a similar shortfall of business information has been noticed.
“Africa is set to witness another new media powerhouse in a few years’ time, as VConnect will not only attend to all business information needs in Nigeria, but will become a Pan African solution provider,” said Rustagi.
He disclosed that VConnect.com developed a user-friendly mobile WAP site because statistics have shown that a huge percentage of website visits are done via the mobile phone, adding that the company also recently launched its Android and Blackberry Applications.
On the firm’s achievements so far, Rustagi said “due to the galloping development of ICT worldwide, SMEs in West Africa face the formidable task of surviving and competing in a global market, thus the presence of a local search engine like VConnect.com which has a wider reach, would help deliver unprecedented opportunities to the businesses. It will be interesting to see how this startup would expand geographically in other parts of Africa.”
The VConnect Co-Founder noted that the SME sector has been a direct beneficiary of these positive spin-offs, especially with the efforts the firm, stressing that it has help to put them on the map so those interested in their products and services can easily reach them.
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