Homegrown retail chain Quickmart has revealed plans to venture into the e commerce space beginning next month with the unveiling of its new digital marketplace app Q-soko.
The retail chain chief marketing officer Betty Wamaitha told that Tech-hubkenya that, as part of the 18-year milestone celebration in the country, the platform will be looking to serve the middle class who want a shopping convenience from home.
In the plan Quickmart is looking to serve an estimated 1 million customers monthly through the platform.
“Right now as QuickMart we are serving an average of 5 million customers every month we will be looking to serve at least 20 per cent of these on the e-commerce,” Wamaitha said.
The retail chain enters the space at a time that Kenya’s e-commerce penetration is projected to grow to 53.6 per cent by 2025.
A study released by Competition Authority of Kenya in April 2024, says revenue generated from the sector is expected to grow annually at a 19.15 per cent rate to reach a market volume of $208.2 million (Sh28 billion) by 2027.
Quickmart will be looking to ride on the delivery companies already in operation to make the e commerce platform a success.
“We have partnered with the likes of Glovo and Uber eats to serve our customers more conveniently, so in the next phase of Quickmart you will see us in a big way getting into the e commerce,” Wamaitha said.
The convenience of online shopping has grown in the past four years since Covid-19 struck.
In 2020 when the country’s e-commerce penetration, including online food and groceries shopping, was estimated to be at 40.3 per cent.
At the time, it was estimated that 9.3 per cent of Kenyans were shopping for food and groceries online as of 2023, which is now projected to rise to 16.7 per cent by 2027, which translates to 10.5 million consumers.
According to CAK, some of the popular players in the local e-commerce and food delivery scene are Jumia, Glovo, Uber Eats and Yum Deliveries as well as restaurants and retail chains like Carrefour who have independently incorporated e-commerce into their shopping experience.
While Kenya does not have explicit regulations governing e-commerce, there have been several legislative changes in the recent past including the Data Protection Act, of 2019 and the Copyright Amendment Act, of 2019.
The CAK report however notes significant information and regulatory gaps on how digital platforms operate along the e-commerce value chain.
