As Opay Teases Nigerians with OLLA, is the Nigerian Jack-of-all-Trades Dabbling into Smartphone Production?

In a tweet sent out recently, Opay showed pictures of what looks like its next venture in the Nigerian market. The tweet announced that a device called Olla is ‘coming to a store near you’ very soon.

Opay is known for offering a wide range of services to Nigerians, from Oride to Okash, Ofood, Owealth and Otrike, the list goes on. However, this new announcement is shrouded in mystery and indicates that Opay is not done launching products and services into the Nigerian market.

At first glance, Olla appears to be a smartphone. This immediately raises some questions like, what functionalities will it have? Will it be a high-end or low-end phone? Who is the company partnering with? Or whose phone is it branding and selling to Nigerians as its own?

This also raises the question of market entry. Will the phone also be heavily subsidized like Opay’s previous offers to attract buyers? Will it be entirely free? Will it be sold on the super app or will it be the first product to step out from under its umbrella?

On the other hand, the tweet caption mildly suggests that this could be something other than a phone. Just below the picture is a caption which promises users ‘every day’ connection. Could Olla be an internet device?

This is not totally unexpected, considering that with Opay’s $120 million raised in November last year, investments are bound to happen. They are expected to include expanding its existing businesses and adding new ones.

We reached out to Opay to get more insight of what this new product is all about. In response, a senior marketing manager didn’t deny there’s a new device in the works. He promised that a press release will however be made available to us soon enough. So it seems for now the company is all work and less interaction.