Fundraising Fox
Catlog
Techstars '24Lagos, NG · 17 employees on LinkedIn · 4 known investors
Find your way into Catlog
Sign up to find every way you can get introduced to Catlog
- Your email: who you already know at Catlog, and who your contacts know
- 2nd- and 3rd-degree connections: people you know who worked, studied or invested with the Catlog team
- Your LinkedIn: the connections who can make the intro for you
We rank every route by how warm it is, so you raise on warm intros instead of cold emails.
Catlog provides a platform that enables small businesses in Africa to manage social commerce operations, including online catalogs, customer communications, payments, deliveries, and business tracking through WhatsApp and other social channels. The platform simplifies order management and financial tracking for the 5M+ small merchants selling on social media across Africa.
Also known as Catlog.shop
Investors · 4
How we know: the company's own site · the Techstars portfolio · open dataset · Top 3000 Accelerator Startups (no YC) 2026-08 · Not right? Tell us
How we know: the company's own site · Ventures Platform's portfolio page · the VCSheet dataset · Not right? Tell us
How we know: the VCSheet dataset · Not right? Tell us
Company profile
researched Sep 2026Catlog is a Lagos-based software platform for African merchants who sell through social media. Merchants create an online store in minutes by adding products manually or importing Instagram posts, which Catlog converts into product listings using AI. Stores can be customised with brand colours, a logo, a custom domain and a Facebook Pixel, are automatically optimised for search engines, and support product images, videos, multiple product options and "Highlights" collections such as "Best Sellers".
Beyond the storefront, the platform provides built-in checkout with payments in Naira and more than seven other currencies via card, bank transfer, direct debit, USSD or wallet, plus payment links and branded invoices for custom orders. Customers can alternatively send orders through WhatsApp or Instagram, and those orders are recorded automatically on the merchant's dashboard. Management tools cover sales, customer and abandoned-cart tracking, expense and debt logging, analytics, inventory and supply tracking, SMS and WhatsApp marketing campaigns, affiliate referral links, discounts, coupons, tiered wholesale pricing, delivery fees by location, multiple store managers and multi-store accounts. Chowbot, an AI assistant aimed at food businesses, lets customers order, pay and arrange delivery entirely within WhatsApp.
Catlog positions itself as a business management application rather than a marketplace: the store a merchant creates belongs to the merchant, who sells directly to their own customers rather than through a shared marketplace such as Jumia.
Founding story
Co-founders Silas Adedoyin and Segun Oladiran observed the friction of social commerce first-hand, both as buyers and through merchants they knew: sending repeated product photos, answering the same questions, manually confirming payments and recording orders in notebooks. Adedoyin has described the trigger as an attempt to buy sneakers over social media that required searching Twitter for sellers and extensive back-and-forth messaging about brands, sizes and pricing. They began Catlog as a side project, initially a simple online catalog for taking orders on WhatsApp.
Business model
Catlog operates a subscription software business. Merchants get a three-day free trial, after which they subscribe to a Basic plan (₦6,500 per month, up to 100 products, core features) or a Business+ plan (₦12,500 per month, unlimited products, multi-store management, international payments and product videos). At an earlier stage the company charged a single monthly subscription of ₦900 and stated plans to add higher-priced tiers. Payments run through integrated processors such as Paystack into a Catlog wallet that merchants withdraw to their bank accounts.
Recurring monthly subscription fees from merchants across two tiers, following a three-day free trial.
Traction
Catlog reported hundreds of Nigerian sellers on the platform as of April 2022, shortly after emerging from a private beta that began in November 2021. Published merchant testimonials cite businesses including Tees and Co, Penguin Hairs and Debe Empire.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history
Market position
Catlog serves the social commerce segment in Africa, where social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and WhatsApp account for a large share of online shopping activity. It differentiates itself from online marketplaces such as Jumia and Konga and from Shopify-style standalone storefronts by building order flows around the messaging platforms merchants already use. Its investor base includes Techstars, Ventures Platform, DFS Labs, Resilience 17, Voltron Capital and HOAQ.
Rather than following the Shopify model of moving sellers to a standalone website, Catlog was designed around the social platforms sellers and buyers already use, routing discovery and order completion through store links, WhatsApp and Instagram. Co-founder Silas Adedoyin argued that buyers who will not purchase from marketplaces such as Jumia are equally unlikely to complete long checkout forms on an unknown seller's website, so the company built for conversational, social selling. The company also emphasises that merchants do not need to be registered businesses to use the platform.
Technology
A web and mobile application combining storefront creation, AI-assisted conversion of Instagram posts into product listings, automated SEO, a multi-currency checkout integrated with payment processors including Paystack, a merchant wallet with bank withdrawals, push and email order notifications, inventory and analytics modules, and Chowbot, an AI ordering assistant operating over WhatsApp for food merchants.
Go-to-market
Catlog acquires merchants through self-serve sign-up, referrals and paid and organic social channels; its registration flow asks new users whether they found the company via friend referrals, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok or Twitter ads, influencers and content creators, social posts, Google search, WhatsApp, blogs or webinars. Merchants in turn distribute their own store links across social media, and the platform provides affiliate links, coupons and SMS/WhatsApp campaign tools to drive repeat sales. Customer support is offered by email, phone and WhatsApp.
Small and informal merchants in Africa selling physical products through social media — including fashion, food, beauty and personal care, and electronics vendors — of all sizes and including unregistered businesses.
Geography
Headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria, with the service available to merchants in Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and Kenya. Payments are accepted in Naira and more than seven global currencies, allowing international customers to pay in their own currency.
History
Catlog began as a side project of software engineers Silas Adedoyin and Segun Oladiran and launched in private beta in November 2021. Adedoyin had previously dropped out of the Federal University of Technology Minna in 2018 to build a social learning startup, Easyasitis, which reached roughly 5,000 users before shutting down; he later worked as a software engineer across five companies, including Nigerian open banking startup Mono, which he left in February 2022 to work on Catlog full-time. By April 2022 the product was a link-based catalog that routed orders to WhatsApp and had added automatic capture of WhatsApp orders into a seller dashboard, with a chatbot, seller discovery and credit features on the roadmap. The product has since expanded from a catalog into a broader platform spanning online storefronts, checkout and payments in multiple currencies, inventory, analytics, marketing campaigns and an AI WhatsApp ordering assistant for food businesses.
Compiled by commissioned research from 6 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Related companies · 4
Companies working in the same space as Catlog.
Timeline · 4
launches, deals, and filingsCatlog offers Chowbot, an AI assistant for food businesses that lets customers place orders, pay and arrange delivery entirely on WhatsApp.
Catlog launched a feature allowing sellers to automatically add orders received on WhatsApp to their dashboard, with analytics, buyer management and automated customer notifications.
A co-founder left Nigerian open banking startup Mono, where he led web experience efforts, in February 2022 to focus on Catlog full-time.
Catlog, founded by Silas Adedoyin and Segun Oladiran, launched its social commerce platform in private beta in November 2021.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
▸Research sources · 6
primary sources listed
- Catlogcatlog.shop · web
6 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Catlog do?
- Lagos-based platform that lets African social-media merchants build online stores and manage orders, payments and inventory.
- Who are Catlog's investors?
- Catlog's investors include Techstars, Ventures Platform, Velocity Digital, DFS Lab.
- Where is Catlog headquartered?
- Catlog is headquartered in Lagos, NG.