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Blacqmarket Is A Marketplace For Diverse Businesses

Blacqmarket Is A Marketplace For Diverse Businesses. Blacqmarket was founded by Tim Hogins a South African former security guard turned serial entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist, an online marketplace targeting Africa’s formal and informal merchant sector. Blacqmarket was established with a clear objective to encourage excellence amongst people of colour. It also aims to be the largest black owned e-commerce platform in Africa.

The platform aims to bring cohesion between businesses to business but more importantly business to consumers. Its offering is built on the principle that Black money matters most will afford disadvantaged individuals the opportunity to leverage off their numbers thus increasing their buying power. Its main objective is to teach black people not their self-worth but the worth of the pennies in their pockets. Secondly, they will be taught of how much their money matters and lastly the power in masses/numbers will be evangelised to them.

“The Blacqmarket platform aims to be the solution that will help not only SMMEs but also generate employment through the value chain. We live in unprecedented times, with the constant threat of unemployment, economic downturn and the Covid-19 pandemic weighing heavily on African businesses,” Hogins told IT Web.

The online marketplace allows SMMEs, individual sellers and established businesses to list their products and services online, including professional service providers such as plumbers, electricians, handymen, etc – helping to increase their access to earning opportunities especially during the current lockdown period.

“Our business model allows Blacqmarket to bring the possibility of digitising the largely informal sector by bringing them online safely and securely. Everyone is equal on our platform and our low transaction fees allow merchants to pay up to 70% less than other platforms, allowing the shop owners to retain more from purchases made.” Hogins added.

According to IT Web, each listed merchant will have a dedicated shop assistant, who will be an unemployed youth, to assist merchants with the coordination of online orders, while helping to curb youth unemployment. The block chain technology, he adds, enables merchants to securely fulfil payment processing, and in future, it will allow them to share and securely store digital assets, while enabling customers to pay using Bitcoin.

By Thomas Chiothamisi

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