MaDeals: another promising marketplace app. Success or bust?

After taking a long break from social media, viral comedy personality Melusi Chiripowako, better known as Ray Vines, came back to our screens reinvented. His new project isn’t a TikTok video but a marketplace app that has gained quite a bit of traction over the past few months. The MaDeals app.

MaDeals works as a location-based marketplace where sellers post whatever they have, from second-hand goods to services. It is basically a C2C platform where anyone can decide to sell or buy at any given time. MaDeals makes it so that buyers browse a live map to see what’s available near them, rather than scrolling through a generic feed.

You chat directly with the seller inside the app, agree on a price, and arrange to meet and pay with hard cash or using EcoCash which is supported on the app.

What Madeals is trying to solve isn’t new. A lot of startups have tried the same thing both locally and internationally. The more recognisable competitors being Facebook Marketplace which runs the same consumer to consumer model and has a much bigger audience. OfferUp is also part of the competitors and is the one MaDeals resembles the most with its live map feature.

They have quite grown their user base thanks to their good marketing strategies. There is a variety of goods and services being offered across the platform and some people claim to have actually sold their goods on the platform which is a good sign.

As for the local market, while a huge chunk of it is still held by Facebook Marketplace and Whatsapp Groups, Classifieds.co.zw is a clear dominant platform in the market offering a huge amount of goods and services. Other platforms that are in the same market include Buyorsell, Zimexapp, EasyBuy, theDirectory and of course the Econet fumble Ownai.

As you can see the market is saturated and a lot of these platforms fight for crumbs left by the Facebook Marketplace, Whatsapp Groups and Classifields. Most of these marketplace platforms came in and then disappeared without a trace. In fact in 2021 we covered Marketsquare which looked promising at the time but hasn’t really grown much since then.

One of the reasons why most of these C2C apps don’t take off is trust. On a C2C platform anyone can post their products and for newer apps there is no telling if they are legit or not. So scamming can be common among these marketplace apps so people try to stay far away from them as possible.

Even Facebook Marketplace follows the same C2C model. A person can go check the seller’s profile and look at comments and decide whether they are legit or not.

MaDeals can achieve what others could not. That is if they maximise on Ray Vines’ popularity. For the most part that is what has gotten them this far. The marketing effort they are putting is also impressive and is something that most of the failed marketplace startups simply could not do.

Their application is somewhat easy to use but the live map feature can be confusing at times. The bloopers showing the sellers location can be saturated at one place especially in the CBD and it gets hard to see who is who.

As for their business model, posting a service or good is free. The same goes for buying and requesting services. However the App Store listing shows in-app purchases ranging from small donation tiers up to $69.99. And promotional packages that let sellers pay to boost a listing for anywhere from a day to a month, priced between $9.99 and $49.99.

Their business model can become tricky as people’s donations don’t tend to be enough to keep a business running. And promotional packages are easily ignored by people, especially in Zim.

Whether people take to Madeals probably comes down to trust more than features. Zimbabweans already have Facebook Marketplace, WhatsApp groups and Classifields for buying and selling locally. But having a known face like Ray Vines at the front could work in Madeals’ favour in a way a random new app never gets. But sadly a popular face can only get you so far.

At the end of the day, people are going to prioritize quality and convenience. The Madeals team has a tough battle ahead of them. Only time will tell if they follow the marketplace app trend, or carve their own path.

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