Buyam :

Buyam is a hyper-local e-commerce platform that provides users with the exact experience and feeling they get when making a direct (face-to-face) purchase from a market or shop. The platform allows users to chat with vendors, thereby giving room for price negotiation between vendors and buyers.

The ability to bargain for the prices of products just like in a physical market situation is what makes Buyam unique and different from all other existing e-commerce platforms.

In 2014, Manjong Kelvin, Buyam’s co-founder, approached our founder Churchill Nanje to launch a joint online business. Owing to the former’s prolific sales acumen, Churchill accepted but it was only in April 2021 that the business idea began to take shape ー an e-commerce platform built around African realities.

As a seasoned software engineer, Churchill thought it would be better if they outsourced the development of the e-commerce website to AfroVisioN Group, owing to its 16+ years of experience in building e-commerce websites based on the most popular tech stacks and frameworks. After reviewing the requirements of the website with Kelvin, it was clear that users would be better served with an e-commerce application.

Our engineering team immediately got to work and after a series of planning, designing, and development sprints, we used Java for its cross-platform compatibility and native mobile development tools available in its arsenal to release the Android version of Buyam into the market after 2 months. The iOS version of the application was a little tricky owing to its well-known complexity and deep level of security. However, by using Swift, we were able to cut development time by almost half and built a robust and secure iOS application in less than a month.

Because there was a need to increase app downloads, our development team embarked on building a website to serve as a lead capture channel. By combining the Laravel PHP framework with jQuery, we built a responsive, mobile-first, and SEO-friendly experience into the website and came up with buyam.co. 

The website now gives Buyam the chance to capture potential users, presents the best features of the Buyam application, as well as educates the public on how to use the app.

Today, Buyam boasts 30k+ users, 4k+ registered vendors, and 20k+ products and services on its platform.