African Version of 1688, Reverse Cross - border Business, and the Field Promotion Elite: Egatee's Localized Overseas Expansion Narrative | Overseas Pioneers

At the beginning of April this year, after Trump announced the reciprocal tariff policy, the businesses of many foreign trade merchants in Yiwu came to a halt, but Zha Jiulan became even busier. "Many enterprises facing difficulties in trade with the United States came to us. In response to the government's policy, we plan to select 20,000 merchants to connect with African customers," said Zha Jiulan.

Zha Jiulan is the founder and CEO of Egatee, an African B2B cross - border e - commerce platform. Egatee was established in Africa in 2018, with Transsion Holdings and Yiwu Market Group as the main investment shareholders. Currently, its business covers many African countries and started to open to Chinese merchants in mid - 2024.

Africa has long been in a relatively marginal position in the global e - commerce industry map and is rarely considered as the first stop for going global. Although Africa has a large young population and strong consumer demand, its infrastructure is relatively backward, the market environment is highly localized, and the implicit entry threshold is not low. For merchants who want to engage in cross - border business with Africa, long logistics distances, high risks in cross - border capital circulation, and difficulties in building trust with customers are all obstacles that are difficult to overcome.

This contradictory situation provides conditions for the development of Egatee. By transplanting the digital experience of the domestic supply chain into the African business ecosystem and long - term adaptation to the local development level and social and cultural characteristics, Egatee has explored a B2B platform business model based on the combination of online and offline. On the one hand, it shortens the trading links between local 2B merchants and improves the digital level of the local wholesale and retail industry; on the other hand, it provides a relatively convenient way for Chinese enterprises to go global to Africa.

1. The 1688 of the African retail market

Almost every Chinese person who comes to Lagos, the capital of Nigeria, for the first time will have an illusion as if they have taken a time machine back to China in the 1990s. The urban landscapes of other East African and West African countries are almost the same as that of Lagos.

Limited by the development level of the manufacturing industry, the wholesale and retail formats in African countries are generally at the level of China 30 years ago and are still in a seller's market. The basic form still consists of traditional wholesale markets and fragmented small shops. When retailers need to purchase goods, they often have to come to the capital, shuttle through the crowded and noisy wholesale markets, look for the desired goods in each stall, and bargain with wholesalers.

"It's like going back to the Huangyuan Clothing Market in Yiwu in the past," said Zha Jiulan.

At the same time, the digitalization level of the African retail industry is also low, and the logistics system is weak. "After goods enter Africa from overseas, they are resold layer by layer. When the goods finally reach the end consumers, the price is much higher." This made Zha Jiulan see market opportunities.

After 4 years of preparation and testing, in 2022, the B2B e - commerce platform Egatee was launched, adopting two business models: The self - operated model is for 'fast - moving consumer goods' such as food and grain and oil with a short shelf life. In African regions with a high Engel coefficient, these goods account for the majority of residents' consumption. The self - operated products are centrally purchased by the platform and sold to retail stores, and the platform provides one - stop fulfillment services such as warehousing, logistics, and home delivery.

The other is the platform model, which is for products such as clothing, daily necessities, and hardware and building materials. Egatee serves as a third - party platform similar to 1688, providing an online communication and matching trading platform for suppliers, distributors, and retailers, and providing logistics and online payment services in some areas.

"In Africa, the publicly available data is either very inaccurate or several years old," said Wang Jun, the vice - president of Egatee. To ensure the authenticity of merchant information and goods demand on the platform, Egatee relies on a large number of sales representatives to conduct real - name authentication for merchants who want to enter the market door by door.

"In many African countries, the house number system for residents is very imperfect, which makes it difficult for 2C e - commerce to develop in Africa. In contrast, the 2B platform can succeed because as long as merchants have a fixed stall in the market, we can provide delivery services, and we can also find the merchants if there are any problems," Wang Jun said at a merchant promotion meeting.

Egatee has also tried retail models such as community group - buying in Africa. Zha Jiulan reflected on this, "In the fragmented retail business ecosystem in Africa, we should return to basic common sense. First, break the information black box, align supply and demand information, and solve the problem of difficult goods search, that is, build a platform similar to 1688."

2. The largest B2B e - commerce platform in Africa

After completing the first step of platform construction, the challenge for Egatee is to let merchants see the value of the platform and truly cultivate their online trading habits.

In the initial stage, Egatee designed H5 pages for the stores of merchants who entered the platform and promoted them on Google to improve the search rankings of stores and product names. "When someone calls a merchant and says they saw the store information online and want to purchase goods, the merchant will get excited," said Zha Jiulan. As the number of merchants on the platform gradually increased, the attention of merchants to platform operation also continued to increase.

To meet the increasing trading needs of merchants, Egatee gradually built a direct - operation system and a warehousing and distribution system of 'overseas central warehouse + regional forward warehouse' in each national market, improving the fulfillment time to 48 hours for local in - stock orders and 28 hours for same - city orders. Egatee also cooperated with other local warehouses to establish a cloud - warehouse system and operate it under trusteeship.

By early 2025, the response rate of Egatee's cross - border IM and the online payment usage rate of fully - entrusted categories both reached 80%. In Zha Jiulan's view, these two data can prove that African merchants have basically established the usage habits and trust in the platform.

It is understood that in 2024, Egatee's transaction volume was close to 1 billion yuan, and its revenue mainly came from two parts. In the self - operated model, it earned through product price differences, while in the platform model, it relied on service fees, warehousing, and financial service fees. Zha Jiulan once said in an interview with the media, She saw that many African peers used subsidies and burned money to acquire customers and promote transactions, but they often ended up with heavy losses and the enterprises were overburdened.

The reason why the subsidy - burning model doesn't work is that although Africa seems to have a large population, different countries are fragmented in terms of geography, administration, currency, and language. In fact, they are many scattered small markets. Therefore, in business expansion, Egatee first focused its merchant recruitment in countries such as Nigeria and Tanzania, which have relatively stable political situations, a high level of Internet penetration, a large population, and developed commerce. In a single city of a single country, it polished a business model with achievable operational efficiency and fulfillment costs, and then gradually replicated it to neighboring countries.

Zha Jiulan revealed that next, Egatee plans to launch 'country partners' in each country to expand the existing model to more countries and increase the number of platform merchants to 1.5 million.

3. An efficient channel for China - Africa cross - border trade

In the African commodity wholesale markets, the main merchant groups actually come from Middle Eastern countries such as India or Lebanon. Like Arab merchants a thousand years ago, they purchase goods from Yiwu and Guangzhou and then resell them to African distributors.

As the demand for goods sources from merchants on the platform continued to increase, Zha Jiulan considered opening the platform to Chinese merchants. "By removing the monopolistic middle - wholesalers, African local wholesalers can directly establish contact with Chinese factories, so that the profits of both sides of the merchants will be a little more." At the same time, the digital communication channel can also improve the matching efficiency between Chinese suppliers and African customers. "Previously, other platforms might take three or four months to sign one customer, but now it can be shortened to less than 30 days."

Zha Jiulan explained that compared with other domestic 2B cross - border platforms, the Egatee model is not the traffic logic where Chinese merchants post products and wait for customer inquiries. Instead, African customers first post their needs on the platform, and Chinese merchants take the initiative to establish contact after seeing business opportunities, which is the yellow - page logic. The consideration for choosing this model is that African wholesalers have the need to search for goods, but they are extremely unfamiliar with the Chinese supply chain, have a low willingness to actively search for Chinese sellers, and the time cost is too high. Chinese merchants with supply capabilities only need to pay service fees and do not need to invest a large amount of advertising costs.

However, it is somewhat difficult for Chinese cross - border merchants who are used to waiting for foreign customers in their stalls or waiting for inquiries on the platform to adapt to the Egatee model. Therefore, Egatee provides 'African little assistants' offline locally to help Chinese merchants build trust relationships with African customers. The little assistants can deliver samples on errands or initiate video conferences and invite African customers to visit factories to improve the order - making efficiency.

"Merchants often send samples to overseas customers for free, which will affect their enthusiasm for going global." For this reason, Egatee built a sample exhibition hall in the local wholesale market. "While increasing the exposure of goods, the goods still belong to the merchants. If this customer does not plan to place an order, the goods can be sold to another customer without causing losses." In 2024, on the opening day of Egatee's sample store in Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania, the daily passenger flow exceeded 3,000, and 200 purchasing agents signed contracts on the spot.

Picture: Advertisements at Lusaka International Airport and on the urban main road

To help merchants make orders, Egatee also provides product or category price - quotation references for Chinese merchants who are not familiar with the African market based on the transaction data accumulated on the platform. It also often holds promotion meetings in industrial clusters such as Yiwu to promote African market opportunities and the platform's operation model.

The biggest risk in African cross - border business lies in capital security. "It is not uncommon for African merchants to pay but not receive goods, or for Chinese merchants to ship goods but not receive payment. Capital going out of Africa is often frozen, and private economic exchanges can only rely on underground money - changers for a long time, which is extremely risky and makes it difficult for merchants to build trust with each other," said Zha Jiulan.

Therefore, Egatee cooperates with cross - border payment platforms and banks to provide financial services similar to Alipay in China. After an order is generated, Chinese merchants first ship the goods to Egatee's local warehouse. After the warehouse confirms the receipt of goods, African customers make payments. After Chinese merchants confirm the receipt of payment, Egatee makes the delivery, thus ensuring the safety of the payment of both parties. If an African customer cancels an order after the goods are shipped, Chinese merchants can resell the goods that have been sent to the platform warehouse to avoid losses.

Currently, 20% of the goods on Egatee are directly supplied from China. Zha Jiulan noticed that the merchants most attracted to Egatee are mainly divided into two categories. One category is sellers who used to focus on the US market and now have to expand into new markets, or those who use Africa as a channel to dispose of unsold inventory. The other category is small and medium - sized new merchants with little experience (including factories that have never engaged in foreign trade), who choose to enter the less - competitive African market first.

4. An army of 10,000 sales representatives

Registering merchant information door by door, building its own warehousing and distribution system, and providing operation support for each Chinese merchant... Achieving these capabilities requires a large amount of human resources. Therefore, the number of Egatee's employees in a single African country is maintained at about 100. In Nigeria, where Egatee first expanded, there are more than 1,000 employees at the capital headquarters. The total number of employees in the entire African region is in the thousands, and 90% of them are local employees.

Picture: Egatee's local team in Zambia

Managing such a large number of local African employees is a huge challenge for any Chinese enterprise. "At the beginning, a driver sold the car and the goods together after working for only a few days, causing a loss of hundreds of thousands of yuan. Sales representatives often disappeared all day long." Zha Jiulan said helplessly.

The management pain points forced Egatee to develop a JDE employee management system App independently. The App is installed on each employee's mobile phone, and tasks are assigned and pushed to employees every day. Employees reach the designated location according to the navigation on the App, complete the work tasks according to the specified requirements and standards, and then upload photos or records to complete the check - in, thus ensuring that the task progress is visible and traceable. The company can understand the performance of each employee in real - time through the system's background data and optimize the team configuration.

"Most African employees have not received training in fine - grained operational work before. Therefore, each task must be broken down into detailed specific actions. For example, the work of a warehouse sorter is broken down into four steps: where to pick up the goods, scan the code to confirm information, place the goods on which shelf, and confirm once. Otherwise, errors are likely to occur," said Zheng Wei, the logistics manager.

Under the management of this system, Egatee's labor - efficiency ratio and order - processing efficiency have been improved, and the number of Chinese managers sent to the local area has gradually decreased. In the warehousing and distribution link, Egatee has increased the distribution efficiency from the local average of once a day to twice a day, improving the warehouse turnover efficiency, thus reducing operating costs and increasing profitability. Currently, some enterprises going global to Africa have also purchased and used Egatee's JDE system.

In the past 7 years, while Egatee was strengthening its internal capabilities and deeply cultivating the African local market, the global trade pattern has also undergone a structural transformation. As the traditional path of trade with the United States gradually narrows, more and more merchants are turning their attention to new markets that have not been fully explored, including Africa. Taking Yiwu, a famous domestic foreign - trade industrial cluster, as an example, the official website of the Zhejiang Provincial Development and Reform Commission shows that in 2024, Yiwu's exports reached 588.96 billion yuan, of which the export volume to Africa reached 122.09 billion yuan, accounting for 20%, a year - on - year increase of 16.4%. Africa has been Yiwu's largest export market for three consecutive years.
 

"Our business model has really started to work since this year," said Zha Jiulan. Egetee plans to expand its business to more neighboring countries in the future, strengthen the trade link between China and Africa, attract more factories to enter the platform, and enrich the platform's goods supply and merchant ecosystem.