Gikko.net strikes new deals

Gikko, a start-up we featured here not too long ago has continued to gain ground with its offline & online thrust. The start-up recently concluded a nationwide deal with OK Supermarkets and has begun running a competition across most stores.  It has also sealed an extended partnership with TM which will see its flagship till slip advertising having a presence across retail outlets owned by the retailer.

The last time we sat down with Winston Taylor of Till Roll Ads (the company behind gikko.net), he ran us through his company’s holistic presence on the web, mobile and offline.

On the countrywide rollout of the till roll advertising with OK and TM, Gikko says they’re loving the response and that mobile interactivity will be launched soon.

While till slips might be not be anywhere close to tech, it is important to understand the digital divide in developing countries. Such a divide calls for bridging offline and online to fully address large markets. For example, Africa’s average internet penetration rate is 11%. So on one hand countries like Zimbabwe are witnessing rapid growth in internet access and mobile penetration, while a massive market segment is still in the pre-transition phase on the other. Till Roll Ads is positioning itself across all business verticals in a way that can demystify online and mobile marketing to local businesses, profitably.

The trick in online marketing as well as many other areas of ICT is to knock down barriers preventing adoption. In Zimbabwe one challenge start-ups face is that of demystifying the internet, the truth is that a lot of corporate players and SMEs just don’t get its commercial potential. In such a scenario, striking a balance between offline and online is a proven recipe for success.

In India, start-ups like Flipkart.com understood this early and instead of just duplicating western business models, they included offline strategies such as cash on delivery, instalments and having agents on the ground.

Now that a lot of offline groundwork has been done, we expect to see much more activity on the Gikko website and expansion into regional markets like Zambia and beyond.