After its divorce with Ghafla, a development whose finer details are yet to be disclosed by any of the two parties involved, Ringier Africa seems to have decided to go it alone and launch a news website in Kenya.
Ringier Africa has now moved to rebrand Rupu, one of its online shopping platforms, into what it calls ‘P Promos‘. Rupu is now a segment on the firm’s news website – P Live available at plive.co.ke – which “offers 24/7 news, entertainment, sports, business, videos and much much more!”
(TOP: A screenshot of Ringier’s news website – P Live and below, a banner announcing Rupu’s rebrand to ‘P Promos’) .
An online search of Rupu (rupu.co.ke) now redirects to the new website as its a segment within the site as P Promos – with other sections on the P Live website being News; Entertainment; Sports; Lifestyle and Business Insider (bi), seemingly a partnership between Ringier and the publishers of the business news site launched in 2007 by former Wall Street analyst Henry Blodget and DoubleClick executives Dwight Merriman and Kevin Ryan. The brand was acquired by German media firm Axel Springer in September, 2015.
Being a fairly new site, P Live currently has a traffic rank of 37,803 in Kenya and 14.4 million globally according to Alexa. The site’s rank is still low compared to the original Rupu Kenya site which still has a traffic rank of 648 in Kenya and 275,567 globally.
A letter issued by Rupu states that the portal had a million unique visitors in 2016, providing various online discounted deals to shoppers including travel packages, duvets, cookery and utensils among others.
Rupu will also cease selling products and service coupons from the portal, meaning that previous clients will now need to get in touch with retailers and service providers directly for such offers.
“At the same time, we will no longer be selling product and service coupons online at rupu.co.ke. In future, you’l be able to take advantage of specials and deals directly at retailers. We will stop taking customer emails and telephone on Friday 27 January and will only be able to answer questions about past deals, refunds or any other topic until then,” states rupu in the letter, effectively announcing that the curtains have fallen on the online retailer launched here over 5 years ago.
Word is that they re-branded after getting word about a fierce competitor coming into the market they had sat on
Can be true. Let’s wait and see…