One marketplace for every shop in Rwanda

Ask anyone in Kigali where they bought their last phone charger, school uniform or bag of cement, and you'll get a shop name, a street and maybe a WhatsApp number. You'll rarely get a website. The shops that do have one each built it separately, on a different platform, with a different checkout and delivery policy. As a customer, finding something online means remembering which shop sells it and then learning how that shop's site works.

That's the problem Hilla Marketplace is built to solve. Instead of every business running its own storefront, Hilla gives the whole country one marketplace. A shop joins once, and its products are searchable next to every other shop's.

Why one marketplace works better

• Customers search once. "Size 5 football, Remera" should return every shop that has one, not just the one whose site you remembered.
• Shops skip the website project. Building and maintaining a storefront is expensive and it's not what most shop owners want to spend time on.
• Trust is shared. One consistent checkout, one set of buyer protections and one support channel mean customers aren't gambling on an unfamiliar site.
• Payments work the way people already pay: MTN Mobile Money and Airtel Money first.

Built on the business system, not beside it

The marketplace isn't a separate product bolted onto a shop. It sits on top of Hilla Business, the ERP and accounting system that shop owners use to run their stock, sales and books. When a product sells online, stock goes down in the same place it does for an in-store sale, and the receipt is issued through the same EBM-compliant flow. Nothing needs re-entering.

If a shop owner has to update their stock in two places, one of them will be wrong by Friday.

What's next

We're onboarding a first group of shops and testing delivery zones around Kigali. If you run a business and want to be part of that first group, get in touch through the contact form. We'd like to hear what your shop needs.