e-Commerce Platform with Tech Services Launched

Hicolumn, an e-Commerce tech platform that connects consumers to their choice stores close to their neighborhood, has been launched in Lagos.

The unveiling of Hicolumn, which comes with unique technology services, offered those present at the launch to witness a drone delivering the Hicolumn package to a Nollywood celebrity, Tayo Sobola, popularly called Sotayo Gaga, which underscores the technology built into th3 Hicolumn e-Commerce platform.

Highlights of the launch includes free shopping vouchers to fans of the celebrity and the online shopping she made, which was delivered swiftly within 20 minutes, an attestation of Hicolumn’s prompt delivery service.

The e-Commerce Tech, which is a mobile app, is designed to give visibility to neighbourhood stores and connect them directly to customers anywhere, anytime. It comprises the Hicolumn customers, merchants and delivery apps respectively, which are connected together and work as one enterprise resources programme.

Speaking during the launch, the Chairman of Hicolumn, Benjamin Madu, said the e-Commerce Tech platform was designed to revolutionise the online market in Africa, and offers stores, merchants, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with existing and verifiable businesses, the chance of participating on the platform by downloading the app within 30 minutes, and absolutely free of any registration charges.

According to him, the platform would give users the opportunity of leveraging the internet to serve or sell to their existing and prospective customers without the customers physically visiting the shops.

“Merchants can register and setup their stores for free without difficulties and start getting orders from consumers. They don’t need any delivery facility, but they need to have goods available in stock for packaging after receiving payment from consumers,” Madu explained.

He said Hicolumn would enable merchants to have online presence without having a website or delivery facility, as consumers who have made purchase on the platform would have prompt delivery of goods within 20 minutes, with same quality, same price and faster than physically being at the stores.

“The e-store, the first of its kind, is designed to make a difference in the e-Commerce sector. Also, over 100,000 jobs are expected to be created before the end of 2021, that will bring about large-scale youth empowerment and increase in the patronage of locally made goods,” Madu said.

Hicolumn’s Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Uche Elekwachi, said the platform would transform the online market in Nigeria and Africa with its innovative mobile app that would give merchants the ability to sell their goods to widely dispersed customers.

He said the e-Commerce Tech has come to the rescue of merchants and store owners, to become super strong, active online and not to lose their business focus to foreign competitors currently entering their domain, especially in this period of COVID-19 pandemic when shopping is mostly done online.

According to Elekwachi, majority of the e-Commerce apps in the country do not adopt traditional open market methods of e-Commerce that enable buyers choose from a variety of physically available merchants, thereby coercing them to trade with only selected sellers.