Speaking to Lusa, the project's founder, Geraldine Gerardo, said the digital trading platform has experienced "exponential" growth since the beginning of the quarantine imposed by the government to try to control the covid-19 pandemic.
From March, when Angola closed borders and declared a state of emergency restricting trade and informal markets, the demands of 'Roque Online' "were 5 or six times greater than normal," she said.
Many markets were closed because they did not have the sanitary conditions and did not fulfill the required social distancing, despite the challenge from sellers who claim they have no other means of survival and can only practice the activity now on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
But in 'Roque Online', as in the former Roque Santeiro, which operated in Luanda between 1991 and 2011, it was still possible to find a bit of everything, from food and drinks to beauty products, fashion or construction items.
There are more than a thousand articles where the typical Angolan products stand out, such as bagre and coconut smoked or dried, the vat of corn and bonbons, fruits such as banana bread, ginguenga and maboque, wild honey or gimboa (herbaceous plant), an inventory that will double next month.
"What makes the difference, besides having the typical Angolan products, is that we also have live or slaughtered animals," said Geraldine Gerardo, saying that 'Roque Online' attracts all kinds of customers, from Angolans to expatriates.
"The Chinese, for example, are looking for a lot of products that they cannot find elsewhere, such as animals or some specific foods," she said.
The businesswoman stresses that, for customers, "there is nothing missing from the experience of going to market," and it is even possible to negotiate prices directly with sellers, mostly women.
The latter, in turn, found a new outlet for their products on the platform.
"We managed to incorporate the informal market into a digital platform efficiently," she said, adding that 'Roque Online' allows us to comply with the rules of social distancing and avoid the physical agglomerations that have been registered throughout Luanda.
During the state of emergency, registered vendors had "a direct line to continue marketing their products and make their sales without being physically in the squares, overcoming the constraints of this period.
"We have already presented more proposals to market managers and other entities" to boost the initiative and create value, stressed the businesswoman.
Roque Online' has national coverage, providing services in Luanda, Lubango, Huambo and Cabinda, covering 18 informal markets with almost 100 thousand sellers, and has another 36 thousand registered sellers, individually or in networks of cooperatives.
With the growth that has occurred since March, "we have had to make adjustments to our operational capacity and we have tertiarised the logistics part," says the platform's CEO, created in September 2018, and which has the "B2B" (between companies) and "B2C" (for the final consumer) sales modalities.
The greatest weight of sales is in the "B2B" channel as it is "easier for companies to use the online platform and the mobile application," admits Geraldine Gerardo, indicating that for some salespeople, there are still technological barriers, such as having a mobile phone or network coverage.
However, she believes that the business will continue to grow and that the trend is to be increasingly sought after not only by customers but also by vendors, bringing the markets closer to the technological world.
