GiriToday is emerging as a foundational platform for Africa’s outbound e-commerce, addressing one of the continent’s most persistent gaps: enabling small African businesses to sell efficiently and securely to global markets. Beginning with Nigeria, the company has spent 2025 validating its model, testing infrastructure, and proving that African supply can meet international demand when the right systems are in place.
Throughout the year, GiriToday focused on building both sides of its marketplace simultaneously. Sellers were onboarded across Nigeria, while global buyers were introduced to a curated selection of authentic African products. This dual launch allowed the company to stress-test trust, payments, logistics, and fulfillment in real conditions rather than theory. By mid-2025, the buyer-facing platform was live, targeting customers in North America and the United Kingdom, regions with established demand for African-made and culturally rooted products.
At the core of GiriToday’s strategy is its support for small and medium-sized enterprises, many of which lack the digital infrastructure needed to compete internationally. The platform provides sellers with tools for online storefronts, integrated payments, logistics coordination, and data insights, reducing the technical and operational barriers that typically prevent cross-border trade. Features such as phone-number-based onboarding and AI-assisted product listing were introduced to simplify adoption and reduce friction for first-time digital sellers.
These efforts translated into measurable growth especially between February and December 2025, seller acquisition increased by 800 percent, driven largely by organic discovery, referrals, and community-based outreach rather than paid acquisition. More than 800 sellers joined the platform across over 20 Nigerian states, demonstrating national reach rather than concentration in a few urban centres. By year’s end, over 900 products had been listed, and GiriToday successfully completed its first international sale and end-to-end cross-border delivery, an important operational milestone for a young outbound commerce platform.
GiriToday evaluated fulfillment partners by running live orders through the entire delivery chain, identifying bottlenecks, and working with logistics providers to improve consistency, coverage, and delivery timelines. Product verification and quality assurance were embedded into the process to ensure that buyers received accurate and compliant goods. The company also built strategic partnerships with payment providers for collections and settlements, logistics partners for international shipping, and grassroots organisations including networks in Abeokuta North, to connect directly with sellers and keep platform pricing competitive. Additional partnerships with firms such as Cosearch and EverC helped establish the groundwork for fraud prevention, chargeback handling, and regulatory compliance as transaction volumes grow.
Trust and security were treated as foundational infrastructure rather than add-ons and by the end of 2025, GiriToday operated a secure, encrypted marketplace across web and mobile, supported by PCI-compliant payment systems and both global and regional payment providers. Role-based access controls clearly separated buyer, seller, and administrative functions, while verified sellers, controlled payout timelines, and platform-managed dispute resolution helped protect both sides of the transaction. Customer and transaction data were handled using a privacy-first approach aligned with global best practices for digital commerce.
With its core assumptions validated, GiriToday is now raising $500,000 to accelerate its next phase of growth. The funding will be directed toward expanding seller acquisition nationwide, launching a full-featured seller mobile application, deepening logistics integrations to reduce delivery times, expanding buyer access into Europe, and strengthening fraud detection and compliance systems. Importantly, the company’s progress to date has been capital-efficient, relying on product iteration, partnerships, and grassroots engagement rather than heavy spending.
GiriToday does not see itself as a conventional online marketplace. Instead, it is positioning as an infrastructure layer for Africa’s outbound trade aggregating fragmented supply, embedding global payment rails, coordinating logistics, and establishing the trust mechanisms required for sustainable cross-border commerce. As global interest in African-made, ethically sourced, and culturally rooted products continues to rise, the company believes the challenge is no longer demand, but execution at scale.
Looking ahead to 2026, GiriToday plans to fully roll out its seller mobile application with advanced tools for inventory management, analytics, and fulfillment, alongside significant improvements to the buyer experience, including faster navigation, personalised discovery, and more secure checkout flows. The roadmap also includes expansion into additional African regions, the introduction of an AI-powered product matching engine to improve visibility and conversion, and broader partnerships with fintechs, logistics firms, payment platforms, local governments, and creative communities.
The company views recent global e-commerce trends, particularly in fast-moving consumer goods and low-manufacture categories as signals of a broader shift toward natural and ethically sourced products rooted in African traditions. For GiriToday, these trends reinforce its belief that Africa’s retail potential is no longer hypothetical and with the right infrastructure, African businesses can compete globally on quality, authenticity, and trust.
The company is led by Wale Ayantoye, Co-Founder and CEO, whose recent appointment to the Marketplace Risk Advisory Board underscores GiriToday’s long-term commitment to trust, compliance, and responsible cross-border commerce.
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