Will market spinner Opay stop at OCar, or soon launch OFuel as next game?

ORide, OLeads, OList, OWealth, OFood, and now OCar –the Chinese bull and payment platform, Opay, has always been pushing its chest forward in the fierce battle to lead, entering into market spaces to then dominate.

While you are probably aware of the Chinese common business strategy, which is straying into an existing market to compete; you would agree that the new OCar launch isn’t anything different from this. The implication is that Uber and Bolt now have scores to settle with the market aggressive Opay.

Table turner Opay, like in its usual tradition, has launched with a tempting offer, starting off its OCar honeymoon and business window with N200 for rides that ordinary should go for N2000+. For this unbearable market pricing challenge, Bolt and Uber should be worried. And, if nothing else, for the fact that OCar is launching in Uber-Bolt dominated territories –Benin, Owerri, Abuja, Kaduna with Lagos as the pilot state.

However, going by the unexpected business twists and turns as made by the company in recent times, Opay’s next game cannot be absolutely predicted. So far so intriguing as it has been blowing up in spaces least expected.

Like in our recent analysis, where we predicted Opay’s possibility of investing its new $120 million funding to hit another market player out of space, the future looks promising for Opay, already. In that report, recall we asked: Will Opay’s new $120 million funding send another business to its grave? And, it seems Opay has responded in less than 6 hours with the OCar launch, saying: Just maybe, Ripples Nigeria.

Read also: GIGgo goes live in Lagos. This App may just be what GIG Logistics needs to consolidate market leadership

Hence, as a league of market analysts, perhaps, an OFuel game changer is in the pipeline –going by the fact that Nigeria is a ready market of fuel consumers and, arguably, one of the world’s largest consumers of fuel.

With stats from Knoema, which is the world’s dairy for decision-making data, fuel consumption in Nigeria has always been on the high side, a consequence of our failure to diversify our source of energy.

According to Knoema, data available for August 2019 indicated that petroleum consumption for Nigeria was 436 thousand barrels per day. With this figure in mind, which is equally available to Opay’s business development managers, we would not be outrightly shocked when anything close to fuel selling services comes to the Opay table.

Interesting times are, no doubt, ahead. Since when market figures are right, businesses smile, will the Opay business team consider a fuel market deal, will they not? 

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