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Mooved, an African home appliance company, completed its angel round of financing in April 2021!

Founded in 2020, Mooved is currently focusing on the Ghana and Ivory Coast markets, and is committed to becoming the number one brand of home appliances in Africa.

Xu Ran, one of the founders of mooved, joined Skyworth before founding Mooved and began to take root in Africa in 2015. Since 2016, on-site research has been conducted on the home appliance market in more than 20 countries in Africa. In the past few years, he has seen huge demand and business opportunities in the home appliance market in Africa.

In 2019, Skyworth narrowed its sights back to the Chinese market, and Xu Ran began to prepare to start his own business.

The current African home appliance market is extremely scarce, and it is a fertile land that needs to be developed urgently.

01

The extremely scarce African home appliance market

For an African rural family, whether you are wealthy and whether you can marry your daughter is the judgement condition, in addition to whether the family has a donkey, is whether the family has Chinese home appliances.

Entering into a relatively affluent rural family in Nigeria, the income of the male owner of this family is comparable to that of the middle class in the city. In his home, a 12-inch TV covered with a white cloth is placed on a wooden table. It seems to have been useless for a long time. There is a second-hand electric fan in the living room and bedroom, and there is a stove in the kitchen, and there is a special place. The new microwave oven in a conspicuous position is all the electrical appliances in his house except the mobile phone lights.

These appliances are all Chinese brands except for the stove, but in fact, even if they buy these appliances, the family basically doesn't use them.

There is no electricity at home, but there are electrical appliances; more than 80% of people have mobile phones, but the power-on rate is less than 20%; even if the electricity is turned on, electrical appliances cannot be used several times throughout the year. This is Africa.

Most parts of Africa are connected to the power grid, but electricity for a family is too expensive. Residents in the city can use it occasionally. Most ordinary people cannot afford the electricity bills for daily use, and there are frequent power outages in some areas. .

These conditions have directly led to the low penetration rate of home appliances in Africa, and the home appliances on the market are different from what we imagined.

Ninety percent of the new TV screens are just unpacking the reinstalled hair dryer packaging box. Unless you are in a large department store, you can even see a few vertical barbecue boxes. It seems that no item is brand new. In fact, even so, it is difficult to sell products with "Special Price".

The economic capacity of African residents is one of the sources of this big problem. However, with the rapid economic growth of African economy brought about by the continuous expansion of Chinese companies in Africa, this huge population is gradually having the ability to afford a full set of household appliances or some household appliances. The demand for electrical appliances is also increasing.

African consumers desire high-quality, cost-effective home appliances that are suitable for local users. For example, in Africa, where the weather is hot, the cooling performance of water dispensers and other products is improved; local water shortages require water-saving washing machines. The voltage in West Africa is often unstable, and Mooved will transform the TV to a wide voltage to adapt to the local power supply situation.

While the Internet infrastructure in Africa is still underdeveloped, Mooved is exploring new ideas for providing consumers with offline viewing content, and developing paid SD cards embedded in TVs.

The more rooted teams in Africa, the more they understand the needs of consumers, and the easier it is to obtain market dividends.

02

The share of Chinese brands continues to rise

In recent years, the economic development of major African countries has been stable, and the population has been increasing year by year. In the future, with the development of Africa's economy and politics, the market demand for home appliances will gradually be released.

Xu Ran, one of the founders of Mooved, believes that the African market has a large capacity and there are structural market opportunities: The African home appliance market is similar to the Chinese mobile phone market around 2008, and it is at a turning point in the transition from "unbranded home appliances" to "branded home appliances". In the future, a local brand similar to Transsion Holdings may be born.

More and more companies have entered this industry. Due to the different levels of manufacturing, some companies are shoddy, resulting in uneven quality of home appliances on the market.

At the same time, the share of Chinese brands in the African market continues to rise.

Currently, Mooved is seeking Pre-A round of financing. In the future, Mooved plans to open up the Nigerian market in 2022 to cover the three most valuable markets in West Africa. For Mooved, their strategic goal is to become TRANSSION Holdings of the home appliance circuit in Africa.

In addition to mooved, Haier Group has long been deployed in Africa. At present, Haier has established a dealer network in many African countries, providing local consumers with a full range of cost-effective products, and has established in most countries in Africa. The perfect after-sales service system solves the worries of African consumers. Based on this, in the African market, Haier has become a Chinese home appliance brand that consumers are more familiar with.

In Nigeria, Haier Group, as one of the Chinese home appliance companies that are deeply cultivating Africa, is centered on the Nigerian factory. Haier Refrigerator has gained market recognition for differentiated refrigerator products produced in Nigeria, Egypt and other places.

"Transsion Holdings", the company of Transsion Mobile, the king of mobile phones in Africa, turned its attention to the field of home appliances as early as after its great success, and stumbled all the way.

At present, Kenya, Uganda, Egypt and other African countries attach great importance to the quality of imported home appliances, making low-quality products unable to enter the local market. Higher import standards also help the African home appliance market to eliminate low-end enterprises and optimize the competitive landscape of enterprises.

Africa, as an emerging market, has lower purchasing power and lower requirements for product and logistics quality than the more mature markets in Europe and America. Low-priced, white-label products still have a lot of space in emerging markets, and the threshold for sellers to enter the market is relatively low. . Africa’s rapidly growing urban population and its growing economy will accelerate the development of the home appliance industry in Africa.