Maiaddy, a Nigerian location technology company, has launched Maiaddy Business, a platform designed to help businesses establish and manage their digital presence while connecting that identity to their real-world locations.
The launch marks the latest stage in Maiaddy’s broader location infrastructure strategy. The company began with Loccodes, its system for giving places simple digital identities, followed by Maimaps, its mapping and navigation platform launched on July 28. With Maiaddy Business, the company is now adding a verified business layer to that infrastructure.
Speaking to TechSoma, Maiaddy said the launch of Maiaddy Business completes the next phase of its ecosystem, moving from location identity with Loccodes and navigation through Maimaps to verified digital identities for businesses.
Maiaddy Business is available on the web and through the Maiaddy mobile app. Businesses can use the platform to establish their presence within the Maiaddy ecosystem, while approved profiles are surfaced on Maimaps.
From a location code to a business presence
At the centre of Maiaddy’s product strategy is Loccodes, which the company introduced as a way of giving places a simple digital identity.
The company says Maiaddy Business is built on that same system, allowing businesses to be associated with their actual locations even where conventional address or location identifiers may be inadequate.
That distinction is important to Maiaddy’s approach. Rather than treating a business listing as an isolated profile, the company is connecting the business to the location infrastructure it has already built.
Once a business has been approved, its presence appears on Maimaps, where it becomes searchable and findable to users. Maiaddy also describes this as giving businesses an avenue for visibility and spatial marketing.
A seven-step verification process
Maiaddy says the verification process for businesses is designed to be straightforward, following what it describes as a seven-step process.
Behind the relatively simple user experience, however, the company says it has internal mechanisms designed to ensure that an unauthorised user cannot take control of a business’s presence across the Maiaddy ecosystem.
The platform’s use of Loccodes is also intended to ensure that businesses operating in places without standard identifiers are not automatically excluded from establishing a digital presence.
The company is still working through its early rollout. Maiaddy said approvals are currently pending beyond those processed during its testing and pilot phases, with the company working to clear the backlog as it expands its capacity.
Rather than presenting the backlog as a measure of user adoption, the company described it as a capacity challenge it is currently working to address.
Maiaddy Business is free
For businesses, the core Maiaddy Business offering is fundamentally free.
The company said businesses will not be charged for listing on the platform, the visibility that comes with being listed, or the spatial marketing opportunities available through the platform.
However, Maiaddy said third-party business tools that may eventually be integrated into the platform could charge users for their services. Those charges would come from the providers of the third-party tools rather than from the core business listing itself.
This positions Maiaddy Business as a free entry point for businesses into the company’s wider ecosystem, while leaving room for additional services to be introduced around it.
Building infrastructure around “place”
The launch also fits into a larger ambition for Maiaddy.
The company describes itself as building infrastructure for place identity across the Global South, with its Nigerian operations centred on Loccodes.
Its progression so far has moved from identifying places, to helping people search and navigate them, and now to connecting businesses to those places.
Maiaddy says the long-term goal is for references to “place” in Nigeria, whether written, verbal or digital, to be anchored on Loccodes.
Maiaddy Business therefore represents more than an additional business listing product within the company’s ecosystem. It gives Maiaddy a way to connect its location infrastructure with the businesses operating within those locations.
For businesses, the immediate proposition is relatively simple: establish a presence, get verified, and become discoverable through Maimaps without paying for the basic listing.
For Maiaddy, however, the launch adds another layer to its attempt to build a common digital identity system around places and the businesses associated with them.
