Marketplace operator Kaidee aims for 70% jump in sales as its builds on expansion

Chief executive officer Tiwa York said that, under the plans for this year, the number of its listings would rise from 8.7 million to 17.4 million and deals would increase from 1.7 million to 3.4 million.
Tiwa said Kaidee performed well in 2018, with 30 million people visiting the platform. Its revenue increased 68 per cent from the previous year. It had 8.7 million listings, of which 1.7 million became deals.
This year, it will focus more on the quality of its listings, Tiwa said, with the use of machine learning to use the site’s Big Data to turn out recommendations and guideline for sellers and buyers.
He said that around 70 per cent of its total revenue came from the listing of services, including fees, bump fees and top ads. The remainder came from banners on the platform.
Among its listings, about 1.2 million to 1.3 million listing are live. It has around 30,000 new listings come in each day and about 800,000 to 1 million new listings added each month.
The platform has around 600,000 to 650,000 daily active users who together visit the platform around 800,000 to 1 million times per day. This creates around 15 to 20 million page views per day for Kaidee.
Kaidee has 216 item categories under its four main vertical markets: car (Rod Kaidee), motorcycle (Mocy Kaidee), real estate (Baan Kaidee), and agriculture (Farm Kaidee).
“The top market is car (Rod Kaidee), which is 56 per cent of the total of 1.7 million completed deals, while real estate, even though it became available only in 2018, is a potential growth market at 18 per cent of the total of 1.7 million completed deals in 2018,” said Tiwa.
Tiwa said 30 per cent of Kaidee’s users are professionals and small and medium-sized businesses, while the remainder are ordinary consumers. 
 “The products are available across the 216 categories and cover new and used products, depending on the categories,” said Tiwa.
He said Kaidee is easy to use without initial costs and is secure. 
“We recommend that users complete the deal on the platform since we keep all records that can be tracked back. Our fraud ratio is very low, at 0.00254 per cent. Security is our serious priority,” said Tiwa. 
He said that with this year’s focus on the quality of listings and security, the company will invest more on technology to improve services, as well as on marketing and within the team to focus on business coverage nationwide. He did not say how much the company would spend.
 “This year, we will add more than 40 people to our team to expand in upcountry areas,” said Tiwa. “We will also focus on research and development, especially on machine learning, to make our services better. We will continue to do marketing to expand the market and people’s awareness of the platform.”