African Version of 1688, Reverse Cross-Border Trade, and Field Sales Force: Egatee's Localized Overseas Expansion Narrative | Overseas Pioneers
Introduction:
Going global is no longer an option for enterprises, but there are still many choices in the way of going global. Brand going global, supply chain going global, cross - border e - commerce... Behind each model, there are countless stories of Chinese companies' arduous exploration; North America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America... On every distant continent, there are more and more international presences of Chinese brands.
From introducing foreign capital forty years ago to "going global in groups" today, Qiantang, as the main front of Hangzhou's export - oriented economy, has always been the bridgehead for enterprises to transform themselves and break through for innovation. The China Enterprises International Service Center has long been concerned about overseas markets and enterprises going global. Based on this, in 2025, we launched a new column "Wave Riders in Going Global", aiming to find global benchmarks in various fields, disassemble practical cases from a professional perspective, precipitate methodologies in the process of seeking consensus, and explore differentiated development paths in non - consensus.
The following is the eighth article in this column.
At the beginning of April this year, after Trump announced the reciprocal tariff policy, the businesses of many Yiwu foreign trade merchants came to a halt, but Zha Jiulan became even busier. "Many enterprises with受阻 businesses in trade with the United States came to us, and we also responded to the government's policy and planned to select 20,000 merchants to connect with African customers." Zha Jiulan said.
Zha Jiulan is the founder and CEO of Egatee, an African B2B cross - border e - commerce platform. Egatee was established in Africa in 2018, and its main investment shareholders are Transsion Holdings and Yiwu Market Group. Currently, its business covers many African countries and started to open to Chinese merchants in the middle of 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 for daily life, its infrastructure is relatively backward, the market environment is highly localized, and the implicit entry threshold is not low. For merchants who want to conduct cross - border business with Africa, long logistics distances, high risks of 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 running - in with 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 chain 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.
01 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 is still composed of traditional wholesale markets and fragmented small shops. When retailers need to purchase goods, they often have to come to the capital, shuttle through 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," Zha Jiulan said.
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 greatly inflated." This made Zha Jiulan see market opportunities.
After four years of preparation and testing, in 2022, the B2B e - commerce platform Egatee was launched, adopting two business models: The self - operated model targets "fast - moving consumer goods" such as food, grain and oil with a short shelf - life. In African regions with a high Engel coefficient, such 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 targets goods such as clothing, daily necessities, and hardware and building materials. Egatee, as a third - party platform similar to 1688, provides an online communication and matching trading platform for suppliers, distributors, and retailers, and provides logistics and distribution and online payment services in some regions.
"In African regions, the publicly available data that can be collected is either very inaccurate or data from several years ago." Wang Jun, the vice - president of Egatee, introduced that in order to ensure the authenticity of merchant information and goods demand on the platform, Egatee relies on a large number of field sales personnel to conduct real - name authentication for merchants who enter the platform door - to - door in the market.
"The house number system of residents in many African countries 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 fixed stalls in the market, we can do distribution, and we can also find the person if there is a problem." Wang Jun said at a merchant promotion meeting.
Egatee has also tried retail models such as community group - buying in Africa. Regarding this, Zha Jiulan reflected, "In the fragmented retail business ecosystem in Africa, we should still return to basic common sense. First, break the information black box, align supply and demand matching information, and solve the problem of difficult goods - finding, that is, to build a platform similar to 1688."
02 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 early stage, Egatee designed H5 pages for the stores of merchants entering the platform and promoted them on Google to improve the search rankings of stores and product names. "When someone calls a merchant, saying that they saw the store information online and want to purchase goods, the merchant starts to get excited." Zha Jiulan said. As the number of merchants on the platform gradually increased, the degree of attention of merchants to platform operation also continued to increase.
To meet the continuously released 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 conduct trusteeship operations.
By the beginning of 2025, the response rate of Egatee's cross - border IM and the online payment usage rate of fully - managed categories both reached 80%. In Zha Jiulan's view, these two data can prove that African merchants' usage habits and trust in the platform have basically been established.
It is understood that in 2024, Egatee's transaction volume was close to 1 billion yuan, and the revenue mainly came from two parts. The self - operated model earns product price differences, while the platform model relies on service fees, as well as warehousing and financial service fees. Zha Jiulan once said in a media interview that seeing many African peers using subsidies and burning money to acquire customers and promote transactions, they often end up with heavy losses and the enterprises are overburdened.
The reason why the subsidy and money - burning model doesn't work is that although Africa seems to have a large population, different countries are in a fragmented state in terms of geography, administrative management, currency, and language. In fact, they are many scattered small markets. Therefore, in business expansion, Egatee first focused the recruitment scope on countries with a relatively stable political situation, a high degree of Internet penetration, a large population, and developed commerce, such as Nigeria and Tanzania. 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, increasing the number of platform merchants to 1.5 million.
03 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 entering the platform continued to increase, Zha Jiulan considered opening the platform to Chinese merchants. "By removing the monopolistic middle - wholesalers, we can directly establish a connection between local African wholesalers and Chinese factories, so that both sides of the merchants can earn more profits." 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 within 30 days."
Zha Jiulan explained that compared with other domestic 2B cross - border platforms, Egatee's model is not the traffic logic where Chinese merchants post goods and wait for customer inquiries, but the yellow - page logic where African customers first post their needs on the platform, and Chinese merchants take the initiative to establish contact after seeing business opportunities. The consideration for choosing this model is that African wholesalers have a need to find goods, but they are extremely unfamiliar with the Chinese supply chain, have a weak willingness to actively search for Chinese sellers, and the time cost is too high. While Chinese merchants with supply capabilities only need to pay service fees and do not need to invest a large amount of advertising fees for traffic.
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 Egatee's model. Therefore, Egatee provides "African little assistants" offline locally to help Chinese merchants establish trust relationships with African customers. The little assistants can run errands to deliver samples or initiate video conferences, inviting African customers to visit factories, improving the order - making efficiency.
"Merchants often send samples to overseas customers for free, which will affect the enthusiasm of merchants to go 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 doesn't plan to place an order, they can be sold to another customer without causing losses." In 2024, on the opening day of Egatee's sample store in the Dar es Salaam market in Tanzania, the daily traffic exceeded 3,000 people, and 200 purchasing agents signed contracts on the spot.
Picture: Advertisements at Lusaka International Airport and on the main urban roads
To help merchants make orders, Egatee also provides product or category quotation references for Chinese merchants who are not familiar with the African market situation based on the transaction data accumulated on the platform. It also often holds promotion meetings in industrial belts such as Yiwu to promote African market opportunities and the platform's operation model.
The biggest risk in cross - border business with Africa 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 banks for a long time, with extremely high risks, making it difficult for merchants to establish trust with each other." Zha Jiulan said.
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 the goods, African customers make the payment. After Chinese merchants confirm the receipt of the payment, Egatee conducts distribution, thus ensuring the safety of both sides' payment for goods. If African customers cancel the order after the goods are shipped, Chinese merchants can also resell the goods that have been sent to the platform's warehouse, avoiding losses.
Currently, 20% of the goods supply on Egatee directly comes from China. Zha Jiulan noticed that the merchants most attracted to Egatee are mainly divided into two categories. One category is sellers who previously focused on the US market and now have to expand into new markets, or use Africa as a channel to dispose of unsalable end - of - season goods; the other category is small and medium - sized new merchants with little experience (including factories that have never done foreign trade), who choose to enter the less - competitive African market first.
04 An Iron Army of Ten Thousand Field Salespeople
Registering merchant information door - to - 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 a hundred. In Nigeria, the first country for expansion, there are more than 1,000 employees at the capital's headquarters, and the total number of employees in the entire African region is in the thousands, of which 90% 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 just a few days after starting work, causing a loss of hundreds of thousands of yuan. Field salespeople often disappeared all day long." Zha Jiulan said helplessly.
The management pain points forced Egatee to self - develop a JDE employee management system App. It distributes and pushes tasks to employees every day. Employees reach the designated location according to the navigation on the App. After completing the work tasks according to the specified requirements and standards, they upload photos or records to complete the check - in, thus ensuring that the task progress is visible and traceable. The company can understand each employee's performance 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, every job must be split into detailed specific actions. For example, the work of a warehouse sorter is split into four steps: where to pick up the goods, scan the code to confirm the information, place the goods on which shelf, and confirm once. Otherwise, it is easy to make mistakes." Zheng Wei, the logistics director, said.
Under the management of this system, Egatee's labor - efficiency ratio and order - processing efficiency have been improved, and the number of Chinese managers dispatched to the local area has gradually decreased. In the warehousing and distribution link, Egatee increased the distribution efficiency from the local common once a day to twice a day, improving the warehouse turnover efficiency, thus reducing operating costs and improving profitability. Currently, some enterprises going global to Africa also purchase and use Egatee's JDE system.
In the past seven years, while Egatee was strengthening its internal strength 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 foreign - trade industrial belt in China, as an example, the official website of the Zhejiang Provincial Development and Reform Commission shows that in 2024, Yiwu's exports were 588.96 billion yuan, of which the export volume to Africa reached 122.09 billion yuan, accounting for 20%, with 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 taken off since this year." Zha Jiulan said. Egetee plans to expand its business to more neighboring countries in the future, and at the same time 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.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Hangzhou Qiantang Enterprise Going Global Service Base", author: Zhejiang Enterprises Going Global. It is published with the authorization of Qiantang.
