F5.5G Leap-forward Development of Broadband in Africa The Africa Broadband Forum 2024 (BBAF 2024) was successfully held in Cape Town, South Africa recently, under…
SA’s website builder startup VIGO expands to Asia with Webnic partnership
South African startup VIGO, which is behind an easy-to-use website-building tool, is expanding its services to Asia. This comes after the tech company partnered with the popular domain registrar, Webnic, which will enable VIGO to roll out its software to clients in Southeast Asia, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Webnic is considered among the world’s top 50 registrars and operates in 60 countries. The Asian company’s partnership with VIGO would mean customers are not only encouraged to register domains, but build their own customised websites and ecommerce platforms.
Since launching in 2013, VIGO has attracted over 3 000 users to its platform.
Read more: VIGO partner to offer SA small businesses site makeovers worth R10k
Carl Wallace, CEO and founder of VIGO, says that VIGO’s core focus is to provide SME’s in developing countries with the tools they need in order to grow their businesses and by entering the Asian market.
“We had to find a partner in Asia who shares our passion for helping small business owners, while knowing they have sufficient knowledge of the local market to effectively roll out a project of this magnitude — we most certainly found that, and more, with Webnic,” Wallace said in a recent press release.
The VIGO platform has therefore been translated into various languages, including simplified Mandarin and Indonesian. Japanese, Taiwanese, Cantonese and more are to follow soon.
The CEO adds that while it’s expanding into new markets, it’s by no means taking focus off the local market. VIGO will be looking to strike similar deals in Africa where ecommerce and mobile payments are surging.
“Africa is the mobile first continent and our solution is still strongly targeted to appeal to this growing market,” says Wallace. “VIGO has always taken pride in being fully mobile and accessible to anyone on any device and if we could increase accessibility by offering the platform in various languages, then it is something we would like to commit to.”
