Introduction

Client Name

Mall for Africa

Business

eCommerce / Retail

Country

African Country

Mall of Africa is based out of Nigeria and is an eCommerce solution provider which helps customers in Africa and other countries to purchase items from more than

200 US/UK stores that also deliver your things to your doorstep.

Mall of Africa is amongst the leading global brands in the industry of logistics. The division provided by them is an unrivaled portfolio of logistic learning services that range from national and international parcel delivery, e-commerce shipping and also fulfillment solutions, international express, road, air, and also ocean transport to industrial supply management chain.

Turnover $10 Million

Services in

Nigeria
Kenya
Rwanda
Tanzania
Uganda

50 more countries across different continents.

My association with Hidden Brains is not just a customer-provider relationship. We are in fact partners. I believe Hidden Brains has equal contribution as mine to the African market through the Mall for Africa solution.Chris Founder & CEO, Mall for Africa

Business Goal

Mall of Africa is one of Africa’s global e-commerce solution providers, it provides the African’s a platform where they can purchase items directly from international online retailers or companies that are not easily accessible to the African population. The app that is patented by them as well as the platform and payment systems provide permission to access hundreds of US and UK e-commerce retailers along with 8.5 million products and more combined. Mall of Africa visions towards moving ahead in the global digital infrastructure.

Pain Areas

Big brands from US/UK do not provide direct delivery to Africa and other regions emerging nearby.
To import an item for any individual a lot of paperwork is required.
The ratio of fraud is at the high bar.
There are dependencies of storage on a third party.
No proper understanding of technology by the ordering staff members.
Emerging markets have trouble in payment in foreign currencies.
Calculations can be complex and difficult.
Various countries have various rules.
Warehouse management is a difficult task.
No to-go option for customers to place orders.

Hidden Brains Approach & Solution

Hidden Brains played an important role towards providing an understanding and capturing the concept and nailed it by launching iOS and Android apps along with chrome application. This was an instant hit in African countries due to its user-friendly and responsive features.

The goal is towards expanding it to other countries and to have a partnership between MFA and DHL express. Hidden brains have created and launched multiple e-commerce websites well within its regions such as Latin America, the Middle East, Russia, and also some of the Caribbean countries where they are customizing as per each of its import/custom laws on all the 3 platforms, Chrome, Android, and iOS.

In the first stage, we started changing our inventory; however, with time it became difficult to keep upgrading and importing.
Enhanced browser extensions as well as the mobile native apps for user face interface to fetch products to our cart directly from the third party.
Everything is managed at our store itself which means that there is no technical change or support required for a third-party store.
Different payment methods that accept both local and foreign currency.
Multiple security layers to avoid fraud prevention measurements.
Implantation of AI/ML APIs in regards to fetching HS code and the category of the product based on the product name.
Allows processing of the Amazon store and keeping the data up to date.
Accuracy level touched with time as bulk data of millions of items was gathered and other calculations were performed.
HS-based code data along with system implementations restrict the product based on the price, quality, category solely depending upon rules stated by the country.
Order processing is automated as in when the order is placed the order is on the platform as well.
Third-party APIs were introduced for atomization in the shipment process.
Better workflow custom for different operations in the warehouse such as finance, customer service, and other basic operations.
To make a mark in different markets many multiple white-label were introduced.
Taking care of infrastructure as well as server client.

Achievements

20+
payment gateways integrated
500+
Average orders processed daily
4000+
daily orders processing during festival season
$1M+
Transactions processed monthly
200+
eCommerce stores integrated
50+
Countries Deliveries across different continents
10+
Years in business
4+
Warehouses for order processing
8.5
Million products to show

Technical Information

Front end

Prototype Tools

HTML 5 CSS Bootstrap JS

Framework

Jquery JavaScript

Template Engine

Smarty 3.0

Back end

Programming Language

PHP 7.3.x ASP .NET

.Net based application to crawl product data from third party stores

Programming Framework

Core PHP Codeigniter Laravel

Mobile Application

Android Native App

JAVA Language

iOS Native App

swift

Database

MYSQL 5.7 MS SQL SQLite

Integrations

More than 30 third-parties integrated

Other Tech Info

Design Tools

Photoshop Adobe Dreamweaver

Security Standards

OWASP, data validations, authentication, authorization, provisioning & reports, sensitive data encryption, Cryptography, exception management, interface access privilege