Jovago seeks govt intervention on e-Commerce infrastructure

Jovago seeks govt intervention on e-Commerce infrastructure

The Federal Government has been called upon to speedily intervene in the provision of e-Commerce infrastructure in order to fast-track the growth of e-Commerce in Nigeria.

Managing Director of Jovago, a hotel booking website, Kushal Dutta, in a

n interview with National Mirror identified e-Commerce infrastructure as one of the key challenging that is affecting the online hotel booking business in the country noting that presenting there are few payment options available for transactions.

He noted that despite the challenges in doing business in Nigeria, the opportunities outweigh the challenges inherent in the business environment saying that government needs to invest in e-Commerce infrastructure so that the business will survive in the country.

According to him, internet access is a major issue in e-Commerce business as a result the access to internet does not only need to easily accessible to all Nigerians but the cost of accessing the internet need to go down adding that even the cost of the device also needs to go down.

He said further that government should double efforts to address the trust element in online business transaction noting anyone that wants to do business transaction must need to feel secure about the transaction.

 While calling on government to also create more payment gateways that will fast track e-Commerce, Dutta noted that since the arrival of its company in Nigeria in 2013 it has been able to increase its staff from four to 150 young Nigerians.

He explained that import duties needs to reduce so that most of the devices that are expensive can easily produced in Nigeria saying that over 70 per cent of internet subscribers access the internet through their mobile devices.

Dutta said that Jovago currently has over 8000 hotels in Nigeria on its portal on which bookings can be made from any part of the world saying that Nigeria is its largest market in Africa.

He disclosed that the choice of Nigeria for Jovago investment was base on the fact that the country has strong business potentials besides being the business hub for West Africa adding it is better than South Africa.

He however observed that hotel online booking business is still growing in Africa unlike in the developed economy where 50 per cent reservations are done online whereas Africa is just about five per cent.

He said that further that Africa has more growth potentials for hotel online booking when compared with the Western world noting that in Nigeria alone it does 50 per cent booking on the average.

Dutta said that Jovoga is committed to the welfare of the people in the environment where it does business saying that it recent made donations to the victims of the Makoko fire accident in Ebute Metta, Lagos.

He said that Jovago recently won the best use of technology award at the Nigerian Mobile Economy Summit, NIMES 2015, saying that the it for its contribution to the promotion of excellent achievements in the hotel online booking business.