5 minute read
Moulaye Taboure: Taking Africa’s Culture to the World via E-commerce
Moulaye Taboure grew up in Mali and went on to work for globally acclaimed companies like PWC and Alstom. Having gained years of experience, he returned home to Africa, and in 2015 founded Afrikrea, an e-commerce startup that enables people across the world to discover, buy, and sell African fashion, arts and craft.
Afrikrea now processes over $10 million transactions in more than 150 countries. Driven by service and operational excellence, Moulaye believes that e-commerce will play a pivotal role in boosting Africa’s economy in the future. Moulaye was one of the top 10 finalists in the Jack Ma Foundation’s Africa Business Heroes Competition which aims to support and inspire the next generation of African entrepreneurs who are helping to build a more sustainable and inclusive economy for the future.
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Business Elites Africa caught up with Moulaye on the state of e-commerce in Africa, fundraising for entrepreneurs, among other issues.
What inspired the launch of Afrikrea?
I was inspired by the realisation that there was a platform like Etsy in the US that is mainly around handcrafts and makes billions of dollars in sales every year.
And on the other hand, you have millions of artisans and craftsmen in Africa that mostly rely on tourism to sell their products. Pretty much every country I’ve travelled to has got at least one African art museum. I began to view this as a dichotomy that didn’t make sense.
How come something artful in the US was making billions of dollars in sales just from one platform, while at the same time, within the African continent, you have a lot of people equally creating good products, with numerous lovers and admirers all over the world, but there was no platform. So that contradiction was what sparked the idea of Afrikrea.
What was it like being among the top 10 finalists at Jack Ma’s Africa Business Heroes?
I’ve been lucky to be selected in a few competitions, but this is the one I’m most proud of. Not only because I am a fan of Jack Ma, but because of the other nine people in the competition.
I think that the biggest assessment of the quality of a contest is when the people that are selected with you are people that you actually admire a lot. And I really think these people are all going to do great things.
Tell us about ANKA, Afrikrea’s SaaS e-commerce platform?
ANKA is actually our resolution to the painful problem that is lurking in e-commerce. This problem is that you cannot sell on only one website or marketplace, and especially in Africa, where you have the challenge of exporting products and getting paid, even though you’ve got potential clients outside the continent.
The idea for us was really to enable exporting and creating online businesses using multiple channels with one subscription, one wallet and one dashboard. It’s affordable too because we’ve managed to make it 10 euros per month. So pretty much anyone can get started and can use it to start selling on social media via direct messages on WhatsApp, or sell on their dedicated website.
How well would you say Africans have adopted e-commerce?
I believe we got pretty well on board, obviously. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. E-commerce is hard, it’s not something that happens so easily anywhere in the world. There aren’t as many users of e-commerce platforms here in Africa, because the trust has yet to be established.
One thing I believe that can make Africa successful in e-commerce is that at our core we are traders. We like to source items in high demand and deliver them to the consumers, irrespective of their country.
I believe spotting opportunities and delivering service is something that Africans excel at. And that’s what e-commerce is. Ultimately, I believe that women are going to excel in our e-commerce space, and we’re pretty proud that there’s about 80% of women in our seller base. E-commerce is about service. It’s actually about being able to provide a service to the customer’s delight, and our African women are among one of the most experienced people in this area.
What was it like sourcing funding in the early days of Afrikrea?
It was extremely hard because no one understood what we were doing. We had clients in Africa and Europe, but the business was very complex to explain to people. They felt like fashion was something frivolous, something that doesn’t really spark interest, like FinTech and other industries do.
How would you advise entrepreneurs to go about raising funds?
My advice for them would be to swap get to know the entrepreneurs in their field that are actually raising funds, and getting an understanding of what makes them special.
I really learned the most from exchanging ideas with my peers. The best person to introduce you to an investor is an entrepreneur they respect.
And they are probably also the best people to help you know if what you’re doing is really useful, or if there’s someone else that did something similar and you’re actually just repeating a mistake that was made before.
What’s your favourite part of being an entrepreneur?
My favourite part is definitely talking to clients and providing solutions for them. There’s nothing I find more exhilarating than when you see someone that is already doing a business say that you actually saved them money, time and energy.
There is no better feeling, not only because you’re helpful, but it’s actually seeing them make more money and expand their teams and services. Serving other entrepreneurs is really the thing that I love the most about what we do.
How do you relieve stress?
The first thing I usually do is take a step back and talk with my co-founders. I think it’s a blessing that I have cofounders with whom I can regularly share perspectives. Thankfully, due to our different viewpoints, the stress tends to go away, as long as there’s one of us that can keep calm.
The second thing, is I do a lot of reading and video gaming. When I read business stories, et cetera, that’s when I get the best ideas for the company. And when you put in perspective what you do versus what Rockefeller did at the old drilling era, it really feels like your current challenge is a smaller issue compared to what those guys had to go through.
