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Nigerian-founded classifieds marketplace Jiji has acquired Bikroy, Bangladesh’s largest online classifieds platform, just thirteen months after entering the South Asian country as Bikroy’s direct competitor.
The deal marks one of the rare instances of an African tech company buying a major Asian digital platform, in a sign that African startups are beginning to look beyond the continent for growth.
The deal, first reported by TechCabal, comes just over a year after the Lagos-headquartered company entered Bangladesh as a direct competitor to Bikroy. While the transaction value was not revealed by Jiji CEO Anton Volianskyi, he did confirm that the company drew on “internal resources and shareholder support” to fund the deal.
The acquisition is also notable for its seller: this is the second time in four years that Jiji has purchased a marketplace from Sweden-based Saltside Technologies, having previously acquired Saltside’s Ghanaian platform Tonaton in 2022. Bikroy, founded in 2012, is particularly well known in Bangladesh for vehicles, electronics, and property listings, and has recorded more than 10 million app downloads and attracts roughly three million monthly users.
For industry watchers, the deal is in line with Jiji’s proven playbook. In 2019, it acquired OLX Africa’s operations in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Uganda, and Tanzania to end years of head-to-head competition with the Naspers-owned platform. The transaction immediately pushed Jiji’s monthly audience above eight million users and made it the dominant classifieds player on the continent.
“This is a deliberate strategy, and we are direct about it,” Volianskyi told TechCabal. “In each case, the sequence is the same: enter organically to validate the opportunity, build a competitive position on the ground, and then evaluate whether organic scaling or consolidation gets us to category leadership faster.”
While Volianskyi is direct about the acquisition strategy, he pushed back on any suggestion of pattern with its acquisitions being Saltside assets. “The fact that two of our transactions involved Saltside assets reflects the reality that they built operations in markets that fit our thesis,” he said. “It is not about targeting a specific counterparty; it is about disciplined market selection.”
Jiji launched in Bangladesh in March 2025, targeting a market with strong similarities to several African economies. There is a large young population, growing internet penetration, increasing smartphone usage, and rising online commerce adoption. Bangladesh has more than 130 million internet users, and industry estimates project its e-commerce market could exceed $12 billion within the next few years.
For Jiji, Bangladesh offered a large digital marketplace with room for scale and consolidation no longer feasible within Africa. Volianskyi says Bikroy will continue to operate under its existing brand rather than being rebranded as Jiji.
“That kind of brand equity and category leadership takes more than a decade to build,” he explained.
While the brand will remain, Jiji plans to migrate Bikroy onto its own technology infrastructure while introducing advertising systems and seller tools already used across its African operations. The company also plans to increase marketing spend in Bangladesh as it pushes for further growth.
With the acquisition of Bikroy, Jiji’s primary rival in Bangladesh narrows to Daraz, the Alibaba-backed e-commerce giant, but it also faces pressure from fast-growing Chinese platforms like Temu. Its biggest strength is the largest classifieds asset in the country.
