Jumia Market

Jumia Market

Type of site	E-commerce
Available in	English, French, Portuguese
Founded	2013 (2013)
Area served	Africa
Founder(s)	Jeremy Hodara, Sacha Poignonnec
Key people	Massimiliano Spalazzi Andrea Di Natale Sefik Bagdadioglu Fanny Ponce Justin Christianson
Industry	Internet
Parent	Jumia Group
Website	Jumia Market
Launched	2013

Jumia Market is an online marketplace/electronic commerce company under the umbrella of the Jumia Group conglomerate. The company is mainly known for its wide range of appliances, hardware, fashion items and a user friendly dashboard for both buyers and sellers.^[1] The company was founded by Jeremy Hodara and Sacha Poignonnec as Kaymu in 2013; a venture specializing in localized Customer to Customer (C2C) and Business to Customer (B2C) products in 14 countries across Africa. Its headquarters are currently in the Yaba area of Lagos, Nigeria.

The company initially started out as the Rocket Internet Company. However, the rapid growth of the company allowed it to secure strategic investors, including CDC, Goldman Sachs, Orange, MTN and the Millicom group.^[2] On June 23, 2016, Africa Internet Group (AIG), Jumia Market’s parent company announced that it was bringing all its known e-commerce companies under the Jumia umbrella. Thus, what used to be known as Kaymu became Jumia Market.^[3]

With the successful acquisition, Jumia Market affiliate program is now Jumia Market (Kaymu) and it houses some amazing benefits for bloggers and other marketers.

The program provides two different means to make money which include making money without making a sale. You also get N500 naira immediately your application is approved. ^[4]

History

Jumia Market was founded by Jeremy Hodara and Sacha Poignonnec in February, 2013. The company started operations in Nigeria and Pakistan that same year under the name Kaymu; after receiving an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Rocket Internet.^[5] The company grew from an employee base of ten to sixty within first nine months and opened operations in Ghana and Morocco in October, 2013.^[6]

By June 2015, Kaymu had expanded its operations to Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Croatia and Angola Mozambique, Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar, Slovenia, Sri Lanka, Bulgaria, Uzbekistan, and the Philippines, bringing the total number of countries to 35 (17 of which are in Africa, while the rest operate in Europe).^[7]

Jumia Market employs eBay's business model, whereby it does not offer first-party product sales, rather it serves as an online mall where sellers and buyers meet to make transactions.^[5] The company’s closest competitors are OLX and Kijiji

The company launched its smartphone apps for Android, iOS and Blackberry in September, 2014 tapping into the tremendous growth of mobile technology, especially on the African continent.^[8] In March 2016, AIG announced that top tier investment bank, Goldman Sachs and French Insurance company AXA, had joined its list of investors with both investing a cumulative sum of over $300 million.^[2] The company is headed globally by Massi Spalazzi, who serves as Chief Executive Officer (CEO), while Andrea Di Natale serves as the company’s Chief Operating Officer (COO). Other top officials in the company are Sefik Bagdadioglu, the Managing Director of the Nigeria office; Fanny Ponce, Managing Director, North African region; and Justin Christianson, Managing Director for the East African region.

Name Change

In June 2016, AIG, via a combination of a live Periscope broadcast and Twitter feed updates, announced that it was merging all its online brands into one company: Jumia.^[3] As a result, platforms exploring food, real estate, automobile, travel, and general goods market, became a part of the Jumia franchise. Basically, "Jumia" was added to whatever service the company offered, so Kaymu became Jumia Market.

Investors

When Jumia Market started as Kaymu, the company was backed by Rocket Internet. Rocket Internet CEO Oliver Samwer described the company as a platform that builds internet companies rather than as investors, innovators or startup incubators as they are perceived by others.^[9] Rocket Internet oversees all of its business affairs in Africa through Africa Internet Group which has shared ownership among Rocket Internet, MTN and Millicom, Goldman Sachs and CDC.

Countries Present

Jumia Market currently operates in Algeria, Angola, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda and Zambia

Products and Services

Jumia Market Village In October 2015, Jumia Market Village, an offline store was created to help attract customers who were skeptical about the safety of online transactions.The store was designed to create a safe and conducive environment for customers who were looking to interact with sellers face to face and customers who could not complete payments through the Internet.^[10]

AIG Express Jumia Market and Jumia, launched AIG Express, a logistics network in May, 2015 to help ease logistics and operations management in Africa. AIG Express aims to provide faster delivery time while creating 100,000 jobs in Africa.^[11]

Safepay Jumia Market SafePayTM was launched in May, 2013 as an avenue for safe payments on its platform. SafePayTM is an escrow service that allows buyers pay directly to Jumia Market for items bought plus the cost of delivery, while sellers have to ship the item purchased to the buyer before receiving the money from Jumia Market.^[12]

Controversy

Jumia Market, like other startups backed by Rocket Internet, has come under heavy criticism for its duplicate business model.^[5] Rocket Internet has been accused of not having any original business ideas and taking business models that have succeeded in Europe and the U.S. and cloning them in emerging economies. Jumia Market has been described as a company that copied the eBay business model.^[13]

References