Lyf.ng is a search engine for every kind of business and service provider in Nigeria. The platform also serves as a marketplace for these local businesses allowing them receive payments from customers online.
The platform incorporates Google maps and enables users put up star-based reviews for businesses.
Lyf.ng was developed by DealDey, the Nigerian daily deals website founded by Konga’s Sim Shagaya, and allows login via a DealDey account, side by side with Facebook, Google+ login.
DealDey has been working at the new platform for a while. Lyf.ng’s domain history on whois reveals that the platform was registered in March 2015 by DealDey Limited.
This is interesting for a couple reasons. Over the years, DealDey has amassed a goldmine of local business information from the their partnerships on deals, so Lyf.ng stands to quickly occupy one of the top spots in the business listing space, and compete directly with Vconnect, a similar online directory for Nigerian businesses.
DealDey however is better poised to topple Vconnect since it incorporates payment solutions directly on the platform. And because pile of data it has on Nigerian consumer dynamics.
Services on DealDey and Lyf.ng are intricately interwoven with a feature on Lyf that updates users on promoted deals from featured businesses. Something that has been DealDey’s proposition these past few years.
With this level of service overlap it’s natural to think that DealDey will be collapsed into Lyf. But a DealDey rep told TechCabal that both companies will operate as stand-alone concerns. “Both platforms will continue to have a symbiotic relationship, and will continue to support each other as both will continue to exist,” the company said.
Currently, Lyf.ng allows Nigerian businesses and service providers to list their services for free, and users to recommend businesses they’d like to see listed. The company plans to launch in all major sub-Saharan African cities in the near future.
Image Credit: HebiFot Via Pixabay Cc
