This article by Gabriella Mulligan originally appeared on HumanIPO, a VC4Africa publishing partner, and is published with permission.
Nigerian web and mobile platform Save & Buy launched its product at DEMO Africa 2013 last week, and is now in talks with investors. Save & Buy has developed a financial planning system for use in online shopping, to enable users to save up online for coveted items. They will soon launch a B2B package.
Save & Buy has been selected as one of ten companies to form part of VC4Africa’s September Cohort, a three-month business development programme which also provides access to VC4Africa’s investor network.
Based on the experience of low-income consumers in Nigeria, for whom credit options are often unavailable, Save & Buy hopes to fill a gap in the e-commerce market by offering a savings product which enables users to pre-plan online purchases and save money towards them.
“The Save & Buy process makes it easy to create and manage a payment schedule that fits into any budget, anywhere, anytime,” said Hugo Obi, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Save & Buy.
“Save & Buy provides a means of payment for items through e-commerce channels, rather than being a channel itself. It allows consumers to save towards the products, conveniently and securely. Essentially providing a smart, debt-free way to plan and pay for online purchases.”
The company works alongside established e-commerce outlets to offer customers these payment and savings options. Obi said the benefit to online stores of using the Save & Buy service is the ability to outsource payment issues to an efficient and cheap partner.
“Indeed, retailers could offer savings services to consumers in-house, but partnering with Save & Buy is cheaper and quicker. Furthermore, by outsourcing this service to Save & Buy, online retailers are able to focus on other important aspects of their operations,” he said.
“We are the first player to connect the online retail market to savings.”
See Save & Buy’s VC4Africa venture profile for more info. Investors should register for a VC4Africa Pro Account to get access to private documents and all other details of the company, and express their interest to invest.