Price comparison site PricePadi launches in Nigeria amid ecommerce boom

Nigerian consumer internet company Iconway today announced the launch of PricePadi, an online shopping service that allows customers to search for and discover products available from different sources in Nigeria along with their current prices.

The service will be going head-to-head with South Africa’s PriceCheck, which has expanded across the continent with the help of a partnership with MTN.

As mentioned by a recent press release, PricePadi features over 10 000 product items under categories of mobiles devices, electronics, computers and appliances from hundreds of leading brands.

The site’s recommendation tech is also highlighted which is meant to improve navigation highlighting products from sites like Jumia, Konga and RegalBuyer.

Speaking about the launch, Iconway Founder, Oduntan Odubanjo said, “We have built a solution, which though far from perfect provides a great user experience for Nigerian shoppers to research items before they purchase. Our goal is to allow Nigerians make informed purchasing choices and we will be investing over the next couple of years to take this to the next level”.

Odubanjo also argues PricePadi’s relevance to Nigeria’s growing ecommere. As a recent study showed, between June 2013 and 2014, a massive 15% increase in online purchases was achieved with 63% of Nigerian internet users having bought at least one item online.

He says that this growth created the need for customers to have access to the kind of information that would make it easier for them to not only make informed decisions about related goods and services but to also discover where to get them online.

The online shopping services comes at a time when Nigerians appear to be embracing the culture buying products online especially with the advent of various online stores selling goods online as well as with the Federal Government’s push for a cashless society.