When the world slowed to a halt in 2020 due to the Coronavirus, something unexpected happened in workplaces everywhere.
Celebrations quietly disappeared. Offices that once gathered around cakes and balloons were suddenly replaced by muted video calls and Slack messages.
For Ademola Koledoye, that shift led him on a search for ways to keep human warmth alive even in the midst of remote work.
That search would become the seed of Eazi Gifting, a rising gifting marketplace designed to help people celebrate loved ones and colleagues, anywhere, anytime, with the tap of a button.
Today, after years of iteration, failures, and reinvention, the platform is emerging as one of Nigeria’s most ambitious attempts to build a pan-African gifting infrastructure.
The origin story
The story of Eazi Gifting began with a simple observation from Ademola’s corporate life.
“I was thinking about something that used to happen in my office; when it’s someone’s birthday, the company would buy cakes and celebrate in the office. So, I thought, now that everyone has gone remote, how will companies be able to maintain this culture? And that was the birth of the idea,” Koledoye tells Techpoint Africa.
That need drove him to build his first gifting platform in 2020. It wasn’t perfect. In fact, he says that the first iteration of the product failed because it seemed like the market was not ready for the product.
But as opposed to trashing the idea in its entirety, he decided to refine it. The second iteration of Eazi Gifting was solely focused on helping companies deliver cakes to employees during celebrations.
The company worked with top startups like Brass Bank and Oze, helping them deliver cakes to employees in Nigeria and Ghana.
While this seemed like the perfect spot for the startup, Koledoye realised after a conversation with a colleague that a platform limited to cakes was not scalable. He needed to build a solution that could provide a wide range of gifting solutions.
So, he went back to the drawing board and began working on the final iteration of Eazi Gifting.
“Eazi Gifting was born out of experimenting. What we have today is a marketplace where people can discover gifting vendors across Nigeria. From cakes to gift boxes and flowers,” Koledoye explains.
What Eazi Gifting does
Eazi Gifting is now a fully automated marketplace where users can discover and order from verified gifting vendors across Nigeria.
In its first and second iteration, Koledoye recalls that whenever he would get an order, he’d have to manually go and find the vendor that is closest to the location, negotiate with the vendor, find a way to pay them, and in some cases even got scammed.
But now, Eazi Gifting is built on a two-app system.
The vendor app functions as a full digital storefront where sellers can display their products across different gifting categories, including cakes, flowers, gift boxes, and other curated items, with plans to introduce even more options as the platform grows.
Each product listing is designed to be comprehensive, offering all the information a customer would usually ask for, which significantly reduces the typical back-and-forth that happens when ordering gifts from small vendors.
On the other side is the user app, built as a discovery and ordering tool that immediately connects customers to verified vendors closest to the delivery location. Koledoye illustrates this with a simple example.
“If someone in Lagos wants to send a gift to a recipient in Abuja, they can filter by state and then by area, and instantly see all vendors available in that specific location. Once an order is placed, it goes straight to the vendor without intermediaries or any need for manual coordination.”
The system also mirrors the logic of ride-hailing platforms in the way it reassigns tasks. If a vendor declines an order, the platform automatically escalates it to other vendors within the same location, ensuring that the customer still gets timely service.
This automated rerouting is central to Eazi Gifting’s scalability, enabling the platform to handle increasing demand without adding operational bottlenecks.
Today, the platform has 1,500 registered vendors in 22 states, across 300 cities in Nigeria.
Eazi Gifting’s business model
Eazi Gifting earns through transaction commissions.
“The business model is simple. Right now, it is commission-based, and we earn a percentage on every transaction.
For a marketplace, this model aligns closely with scaling incentives: the more vendors and orders on the platform, the more revenue it generates.
The startup is currently bootstrapped, with additional funds from family and friends. Koledoye says external funding is not off the table, but ensuring a perfect product-market fit is his priority at the moment.
He currently leads a team of five: four developers and himself.
The vision
Koledoye’s ambitions go beyond Nigeria.
He dreams of Eazi Gifting becoming the continent’s leading gifting marketplace.
“I want to look back and see that Eazi Gifting has become the biggest gifting marketplace in Africa. Maybe the next African unicorn sometime,” he tells Techpoint Africa.
With a model built for scalability, a growing vendor base, and a massive diaspora-driven demand for gifting, his vision is not out of reach.
