At the moment, there are three on-demand motorcycle ride-hailing businesses in Nigeria competing for market share, Max.ng, Gokada and ORide. Oride is owned by Opera and part of a bigger platform called Opay which aims to cater to the lifestyle demands of Nigerians including food order and delivery, utility bills payment, cash access and more.

How is it that the last to enter the market is now the most popular? Simple, money!….. and strategy.

While Gokada was able to raise $1M in funding, Oride raised a whopping $50M and from the look of things, the money is working overtime. No doubt a ton of that money was spent on their technology and services but what is so glaring is their marketing campaigns and expansion strategy.

Within a short period, they were everywhere, especially on outdoor and digital media. Their expansion strategy is also in full swing, they’ve already taken Ibadan and Abeokuta, and ready to take more cities before the year-end.

But that’s not all, it seems that to quickly accelerate their plans, Oride is equipping herself with experienced hands from competitors camp. In a blog post on the subject, Nairametrics is claiming and with proof, that Oride is poaching staff from Gokada which may have been one of the reasons why the latter had to shut down operations on the 14th of August.

It was also revealed that Oride has employed over 4 of Gokada’s top executives and an alarming 65% of their riders.

For more on this including names of senior officials poached from Gokada, click here.

Image source: Nairametrics