Across Africa, commerce is increasingly social. Many businesses from tailors and caterers to jewellers, smartphone resellers, and event organisers operate primarily through Instagram and WhatsApp rather than traditional websites. While this approach helps them reach existing audiences, it can make discovery difficult for new customers.
According to Tend, people often ask questions such as, “Who near me can do this?” or “Can I book them now?” The company says these businesses can be difficult to discover through conventional online search.
“Some of the most established businesses globally are invisible to traditional internet search. They live on Instagram and WhatsApp. That’s true right across Africa, and it’s a fixable engineering problem. Tend is where you finally find them.” – Jayaike Ndu, Founder of Tend
Tend says it is building a discovery platform that works alongside existing social platforms rather than replacing them. By connecting with Instagram, the platform analyses publicly available business content, including posts and Stories, to help users discover local businesses, products, services, and events. Users can describe what they are looking for in natural language and receive relevant results, according to the company.
The company says the platform surfaces current business updates, including new product releases, promotions, available booking slots, and upcoming events, based on recent content shared by businesses on Instagram.
According to Tend, businesses can connect their Instagram accounts to create a storefront without building a separate website. The company says the platform supports bookings, payments, event ticketing, digital wallet passes, and door check-in from a single interface.
Tend states that listing products and services on the platform is free, with no commission charged on sales, while event ticketing attracts a 1% platform fee. The company also says businesses can complete onboarding in less than two minutes.
The company was founded by Jayaike Ndu, a 23-year-old Irish-born Nigerian with diverse exposure having completed secondary school in Nigeria and tertiary in Ireland, he taught himself to code at 13 years old. In 2019 he became the first Nigerian to win the grand prize at Google Code-In, Google’s global open-source competition, and went on to intern at Google’s Zurich office three times. He’s pointing that engineering prowess at a problem he grew up with and fully understands: how the businesses that power African commerce can be everywhere and still invisible.
The businesses were always there, Tend is where you finally find them.
