The Nigerian automotive tech company Autocheck has acquired Cheki Kenya and Uganda from Ringier One Africa Media (ROAM). In a statement the company announced it will finalise the deal in the coming weeks if not months. This is part of the Autocheck’s expansion into East Africa.
How the Cheki come into being?
Cheki was launched in 2010 as an online car classified for dealers, importers, and private sellers in Kenya. The startup, headquartered in Nairobi. The company has expanded operations to Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Later, Cheki was bought by ROAM in 2017 and joined a list of online marketplaces and classifieds in its network like Jobberman.
According to ROAM’s website, Cheki still has operations in Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. However, these markets are quite inactive so it is safe to say Autochek has fully acquired all of Cheki’s main operations.
“Cheki Kenya has always been sort of the crown jewel,” Autochek CEO Etop Ikpe told TechCrunch. “At the time, when we completed the Nigeria and Ghana acquisition, it wasn’t a conscious effort to make this happen, but it’s great that it happened.”
South Africa is the crème de la crème market and has the highest car financing penetration on the continent. Yet despite the seeming competition, Ikpe believes opportunities exist for the company to provide services tailored to the market different from what other companies have.
“The beauty of our platform is that we can be diverse; for instance, we can have a retail or B2B approach. There’s a lot of dynamic ways we can work. So I think it’s natural that our goal is to typically be in every region. We’ve made our inroads into East and West, and we’ll continue to work as we want to be in North and South Africa,” he said.
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