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OmniRetail, a business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce platform operating in Nigeria, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire, has launched OmniOne, a new digital platform designed to help fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) manufacturers scale distribution and streamline operations.
The launch marks an expansion of OmniRetail’s existing infrastructure, which already powers retailer transactions through OmniBiz, its core commerce engine. With OmniOne, the company is extending its capabilities upstream to manufacturers by integrating distribution, data visibility, and financial services into a unified system.
Why FMCG distribution in Africa needs digitisation
Africa’s FMCG market continues to grow rapidly, but the distribution layer remains largely fragmented. According to NielsenIQ, Nigeria and Kenya’s FMCG market grew by 18.1% in value in 2023, with traditional trade accounting for 98% of the retail landscape.
Despite this growth, most distribution processes still rely on manual systems. Orders are often placed via phone calls or physical visits, while payments are handled across multiple disconnected channels. This fragmentation leads to inefficiencies such as delayed deliveries, poor inventory visibility, and missed sales opportunities.
OmniRetail is positioning OmniOne as a solution to these challenges by digitising the entire distribution workflow.
“OmniBiz has earned the trust, built the network, and generated the data that makes OmniOne possible,” said Deepankar Rustagi, founder and CEO of OmniRetail. “Manufacturers, distributors, and financial institutions can now plug into what we have built and scale faster alongside us.”
How OmniOne works alongside OmniBiz
OmniRetail clarified that OmniOne is not a replacement for OmniBiz. Instead, both platforms work together to deliver a more comprehensive ecosystem.
While OmniBiz continues to handle order placement and fulfilment for retailers, OmniOne aggregates that activity into a single dashboard for manufacturers. This provides real-time visibility into demand, inventory levels, distributor performance, and retail sell-through rates.
Through the OmniOne interface, manufacturers can access detailed business insights, including:
- Customer analytics (new, returning, and churned users)
- Order volumes and total sales value
- Customer interactions and engagement data
- Inventory movement and demand patterns
Distributors, on the other hand, can use the platform to manage operations more efficiently. Features include wallet balance tracking, SKU availability and pricing checks, order placement, payment processing, and real-time order tracking.
Connecting goods, payments, credit, and data
A key differentiator for OmniOne is its ability to unify multiple elements of traditional trade into a single system.
“The overall journey connects four things that usually operate separately in traditional trade: goods, payments, credit, and data visibility,” Rustagi explained. “This helps manufacturers make better decisions and helps distributors reduce manual follow-ups, payment delays, blocked working capital, and stockouts.”
By linking these components, OmniRetail aims to create a more efficient and transparent supply chain, where decisions are driven by real-time data rather than manual processes.
Embedded finance as a growth driver
Financial services are a core part of OmniOne’s value proposition. Through partnerships with more than 14 financial institutions, including banks and fintech companies, the platform integrates financial tools directly into trade operations.
These services include:
- Working capital financing
- Digital payments and collections
- Interest-bearing account balances
- Fixed and flexible deposit options
- Point-of-sale (POS) solutions
Credit access on the platform is powered by data-driven risk assessment. Instead of relying solely on traditional collateral, OmniRetail evaluates creditworthiness using transaction history, order frequency, repayment behaviour, and inventory turnover.
This approach allows distributors and retailers to access financing based on actual business activity, potentially expanding credit access across the informal retail sector.
OmniRetail’s scale and market position
The launch of OmniOne comes one year after OmniRetail raised $20 million in its Series A round. Since its founding in 2019, the company has built significant scale across its markets.
OmniRetail reports visibility into more than 500,000 FMCG orders monthly, representing transactions worth approximately ₦250 billion ($182 million). Its network includes over 10,000 distributors and 100,000 retailers.
This scale provides the data foundation needed to power OmniOne’s analytics and embedded finance capabilities.
What’s next: AI and deeper integration
Looking ahead, OmniRetail plans to deepen the platform’s capabilities by integrating more artificial intelligence-driven features. These enhancements are expected to strengthen the connection between commerce, finance, and data insights.
“Our focus is to continue building OmniOne as the operating layer for traditional trade, helping businesses move goods, access financial services, and make decisions with better data,” Rustagi said.
As competition in Africa’s B2B commerce and supply chain space intensifies, OmniRetail is betting that tighter integration between distribution, payments, and financing will define the next phase of growth.
