How Kenyan e-commerce start-up Corido seeks to change East Africa's used goods market

After a tiring experience disposing of his household goods in 2018, Kevin Rakama got an idea; create a product that would make the buying and sale of second-hand household goods seamless.

“With the traditional second-hand goods buyers, the prices were not good and the market for the different things I had was unreliable,” he says.

That is when he incorporated Corido, an online marketplace that connects buyers and sellers of preowned household items across categories such as furniture, electronics, home appliances, toys, textiles, kitchenware, decor, and automobiles.

Rakama, whose background is in telecommunications and web design, launched the start-up in 2020.

Corido Marketplace is bootstrapped, which means instead of relying on money from angel investors and venture capital, Rakama has funded the start-up himself.

“The idea was to first find our ground without external pressure from investors. Once the idea is solid and running, we can fundraise,” he says.

When Corido was launched, in 2020, it was in the backdrop of popular marketplace Jiji’s acquisition of its main competitor in the African market, OLX, which had been operating in Kenya, Ghana, Uganda and Tanzania.

But with Corido, he says, it is not just about buying and selling. Rakama says while most online marketplaces offer a platform for sellers to post ads and find, sift through and connect with buyers and vice versa, Corido has an agency program.

“With agents who are assigned to buyers and sellers, one gets advice on how best to sell or buy, how a product works and if need be, technical assistance during installation. I think that is what sets us apart,” he says.

Another thing the start-up is betting on is the privacy of its clients. The marketplace does not share the seller’s details on its platform, only listing the products in stock from where buyers can select a product and be connected to a Corido Marketplace agent.

Locally, e-commerce firms have a hard time with last-mile delivery challenges, as well as the absence of a reliable national courier service which forces companies to invest heavily in dispatch teams.

Rakama says they have in-house logistics services for handling smaller goods, otherwise, they outsource from its logistics provider partners.

The venture offers BNPL (buy now pay later) options and says it has to date served over 5,000 households in Nairobi and surrounding towns, Mombasa, Kisumu and occasionally in Uganda and Tanzania.

As for storage, Rakama says they run a small warehouse for some of the items they are selling, while for bulky or costly items which they do not first buy from the owners, they connect them to buyers while still at the sellers' premises.

Multiple researchers are projecting growth in the reverse commerce market as consumers increasingly opt for pre-owned goods to cut costs and uphold environmentally friendly shopping habits.

This is especially so with Millennials and Gen Z shoppers, who according to a recent survey by the American e-commerce company eBay deem sustainability very crucial compared to their Boomer counterparts.

Rakama notes that as Kenyans adjust to the biting economic times, the majority of their customer base is most interested in essential household items such as fridges and used television sets while their BNPL offering is gaining traction.

The company says it is eyeing full-fledged entry into Uganda and Tanzania, as well as diversifying its product range to adding new categories of preowned items to meet its consumer demands.