Jiji, a product IT company founded by Ukrainian entrepreneurs and focused on developing online marketplaces and classifieds platforms across African countries, has announced the acquisition of Bikroy, Bangladesh’s largest classifieds service. The deal marks the company’s first expansion beyond Africa and an important milestone in its international growth into South Asian markets.
Jiji was founded in 2014 by Ukrainians Anton Volianskyi and Volodymyr Mnoholetnii within the Genesis ecosystem. Since then, the company has become one of the largest players in the online classifieds market across developing countries: it now operates in nine Sub-Saharan African countries and serves around 65 million users annually. Since 2014, Jiji has raised and invested around $55 million into the development of its platform and has grown both organically and through acquisitions.
The company’s portfolio already includes major transactions in the African market, including the acquisitions of OLX Africa, Cars45, and Tonaton. In this way, Jiji has gradually consolidated the online classifieds market across a number of African countries, strengthening its position in the classifieds segment.
The acquired platform, Bikroy, is the largest classifieds marketplace in Bangladesh and has been operating since 2012. The service covers a broad range of categories, including cars, real estate, electronics, home goods, as well as jobs and services. According to the company, the Bikroy mobile app has been installed more than 10 million times, the platform attracts around 3 million unique users per month, and the number of active sellers and buyers exceeds 100,000 and 400,000 respectively.
The company explains its entry into Bangladesh by the market’s attractiveness: Jiji points to the country’s young population, high urbanization, and rapid growth of digital services, all of which create strong potential for scaling online commerce and advertising-based business models.
Following the completion of the deal, Bikroy will continue operating under its own brand and will retain its local team in order to preserve local market expertise and its existing customer base. At the same time, Jiji’s technologies will gradually be introduced into the platform, including recommendation algorithms, advertising tools, and monetization systems that have already proven effective in Africa.
In effect, this is not only the acquisition of a standalone service, but also an attempt by a Ukrainian company to transfer its classifieds growth model from Africa to Asia, building a multi-regional platform across developing markets.
