Jiji, the Lagos-headquartered classifieds marketplace, has acquired Bikroy, Bangladesh’s largest online classifieds platform, thirteen months after entering the South Asian market as Bikroy’s direct competitor, its first market outside Africa.
Anton Volianskyi, Jiji’s chief executive officer, declined to comment on the transaction value, but shared that the company used “internal resources and shareholder support” for the deal.
The acquisition is Jiji’s first outside Africa and the second time in four years that the company has bought a marketplace from Sweden-based Saltside Technologies. In 2022, it acquired Saltside’s Ghanaian platform Tonaton after years of competing in the same market.
The Bikroy deal is the third time Jiji has acquired a competitor in six years, and it marks a continuation of Jiji’s compete-then-buy playbook: enter a market, compete with the largest player, then buy it.
In 2019, it acquired OLX Africa’s operations in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Uganda, and Tanzania, ending years of head-to-head competition with the Naspers-owned platform. The transaction pushed Jiji’s monthly audience above eight million users and made it the dominant classifieds player on the continent. The second was Tonaton in 2022.
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