• We have removed the marketplace from our website: www.pindula.co.zw
• You can still access it via our mobile app
• Around 30 November, we will eventually remove it from the mobile app too.
• We plan to re-introduce the marketplace again in the future, once we have solved the problems we faced. No dates.
• You can send any questions or feedback to me (Limbikani) on WhatsApp 0772464000 or email hello(at)pindula.com

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Now for the background

We introduced the marketplace in 2021 to provide the Pindula community a means to buy and sell to each other. We wanted to solve the problem of trust between online buyers and seller in Zimbabwe. It is a big problem.

(Not) Solving trust

We had some early success getting sellers to list their products and buyers browsing through them. But the main problem we wanted to solve – trust – remained unsolved. It’s harder than we anticipated.

We are not able to process payments for the products in the marketplace. Without payments, it’s hard to establish a marketplace, let alone a trusted one. In addition, solving trust also requires some on-the-ground work (offline that is) with the sellers. We don’t have the resources or organisation for this yet.

We also realised that our platform is not solving enough problems for the sellers to incentivise good behaviour. This means our leverage in solving the problems, is really low.

In the end, our platform has been an advertising one, instead of a marketplace. We didn’t set out to build an advertising business, for reasons we have outlined before. So we were stuck. 

Getting Unstuck… Pindula Phones

We still need to make Pindula a viable business . Oh yes, in case you  were wondering – Pindula doesn’t make enough money to run itself yet. We are funded by the work at Techzim, and just sheer commitment by the staff here.

We still think that we have built a trusted brand and that this positions us well to build a marketplace and other things.

So, to understand selling online and solve its problems, we decided to become sellers ourselves. Last year, we introduced Pindula Phones. Our objective is that if we succeed – we can extend the methods, tools and platform to other sellers. Ofcourse there is value in just succeeding, period – we are building a business not a charity organisation.

There are some good signals so far. The people that have bought phones on Pindula tell us it’s a refreshing experience, and they refer their friends. Needless to say, we’re excited about this.

But it’s taking a lot work and, because of it, we have not done any work on the marketplace in a long time now. Those of you who are sellers know this. Apart from the issues I’ve mentioned above, there are many usability problems with the marketplace that need attention. But why spend time fixing usability issues when the whole concept has unresolved problems?

This is why we have decided to shut the marketplace down for now.

What to do for those affected

For those that were paying to advertise through the marketplace and our WhatsApp platform, we are shutting down this tool as well.

We have built some relationships with a few businesses who pay to advertise. These particular businesses can continue to advertise on Pindula, but the bookings will take place offline via WhatsApp conversations.

We will not be taking any new paying advertisers. It’s not that we’re being arrogant in refusing the money. Oh, trust me, we need the money. It’s just that advertising will not help us much. Facebook, Instagram, and Google Ads just do the job so much better than us and we haven’t figured out how to do it better.

As usual, we are thankful for all the support you continue to give us as we build this. We love creating useful content for fellow Africans. We love being useful to you. That’s our work. That’s our thanks to you.