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In a country with over 2 million registered businesses, according to the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) and perhaps over 5 million businesses existing, searching for business information is gradually getting a lot easier and faster with the Internet.
Although most people still rely on word-of-mouth for business addresses and locations, it seems a growing number of people are accessing the web and mobile devices for information about businesses.
One of the fastest growing online business search destinations is
VConnect.com launched in March 2011. The search engine which claims to have over 300,000 business listings and information about products, services and companies in Nigeria offers one of the fastest and easiest ways to find business information via web, mobile and telesearch.
Another fast-growing business listing service for Nigeria is MIH Internet-backed, Mocality, which
launched (http://techloy.com/2011/09/26/african-mobile-business-directory-mocality-comes-to-nigeria/) in August 2011 and currently has about 150,000 businesses listed. The company pays members of the public (aka Mocality Agents) up to N200 to add a new business.
Of course, there are other business directory services such as
NigeriaGalleria.com, arguably the oldest business directory in Nigeria launched since 2003,
NigerianBusinessGuide.net,
ConnectNigeria.com (
Disclosure: I worked there in the past),
Nawaooo.com and
InfoMob.com (formerly Gyst.com).
(http://techloy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/VConnect-vs-Mocality_Alexa-graph.png) (http://techloy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/VConnect-vs-Mocality_Alexa-graph.png)
But it appears that the business information war is really going to be between VConnect and Mocality, as both (foreign) companies look to out-spend each other in million naira marketing, advertising and customer acquisition efforts.
These two business information search services are no doubt the leading rivals in the business information war in Nigeria, as they both have the largest number of business information and have attracted the largest number of visitors to their sites based on statistics from Alexa and Compete in the past six months.
But who will win the business information war?For now, it's really hard to say, but a few insights could help predict the future.
In terms of number of businesses listed, VConnect is no doubt the clear leader, if their 300,000 business listings claim is anything to go by. Mocality, on the other hand, has about 150,000 businesses listed, although with a cleaner and user-friendly display of business information than VConnect.
Thus, in terms of a user-friendly and innovative service, I think that Mocality offers a better solution to finding information easier and faster without much clutter as VConnect appears. However, both services offer a user-friendly mobile version that provides business information on the go.
Ultimately, I think that the winner in the business information war would not be who can spend the most in marketing/advertising, rather in acquiring the most and updated business information.
While Vconnect appears to be the leader in this space at the moment, my guess is that they'd be watching their back as Mocality seems to have a better strategy for data acquisition.
Whether or not they will both make money in this space is the subject of a future post.
[Image via: MyTVMoments.com]TechLoy