Chinenye Anuforo
Mrs. Juliet Anammah is the CEO of Jumia Nigeria. In this interview, she explains that the company’s recent listing on New York Stock Exchange shows that innovation is happening in Africa. In her words, “It shows an innovative, dynamic and modern Africa.”
Listing on the NYSE
This is the largest stock exchange in the world; many technology companies are listed on the NYSE (Alibaba, Twitter, Snap, etc.).
By joining the NYSE and by being the first African technology company to do so, we want to show the digital innovation happening in Africa and the opportunities from Africa in terms of technology and e-commerce.
We contemplated several venues, ultimately, we met a lot of investors and New York seemed the more natural place, given the number of investors familiar with the business model.
More investors have a marketplace and tech focus in New York than in any other place. We made a logical choice.
Why the IPO
We have been private for seven years, and we see a lot of positive aspects to being public.
For us, this is really about creating more trust and raising the public profile to help with the business.
Raising the public profile is going to help us bring more sellers to Jumia. Many sellers or partners are yet to know about us, and once they do, we hope they will be keen to work with us.
We also hope this will help us build even more trust with consumers, in particular, those who are still not comfortable with e-commerce, may now see us as an established company and, we hope this will help our growth and consumer adoption.
We also hope that the listing will help us with talent recruitment, retention, as we aim to attract more attention from top talent.
Is Jumia an African company?
Yes. Jumia only operates in Africa (14 countries) and will never go anywhere else. Jumia has invested heavily in tackling major infrastructure challenges including investing in logistics and delivery. It has also developed a proprietary online payments technology.
It is also worth noting that though our two CEOs are French, like many companies where CEOs/founders are of a different nationality, and a small team of key account managers in Dubai (to oversee partner brands whose headquarters are in Dubai), Jumia’s management and staff in most countries are largely local, including country heads. We directly employ more than 5,000 people in Africa and believe that our business has a significant indirect impact on job creation across the continent.
Jumia has international shareholders, like many other companies and we are bringing investors to the African tech scene and building the economy and talent there. Though initially funded by German investors in 2012, we got one of our main shareholders (and still do to date), MTN, in South Africa. It is amazing that international investors are bringing positive news to the whole tech scene in Africa and for many more startup companies after us. Now that we are public, any African investor is welcome to invest in Jumia.
Nigeria is our HQ in Africa, and our incorporation in Germany is a way to get foreign investors excited to send funds to Africa to boost our operations.
Our mission remains to help our consumers’ everyday lives better and save time and money. We are also helping our sellers grow their businesses through our platform; as evidenced by the fact that we have fostered economic growth for 80,000 sellers in the continent.
Financial holding
Most international investors have challenges when they try to push money to sub-Saharan African countries as investment. So, they are more comfortable with investing in companies incorporated in the US or markets they are more familiar with.
Plan to become profitable and satisfy investors
Jumia is growing rapidly. Please, understand that we are not able to comment on the specific projections.
You can see in the registration statement that, in 2018, Jumia delivered GMV growth of 63.3 per cent. Revenue from third party sales grew by 121.5 per cent; for the last two years, Jumia has also delivered positive platform contribution at group level, and for the biggest market, Nigeria, positive contribution after all fulfilment expenses during the second half of 2018.
We are working on the long term, we have invested heavily in infrastructure (warehouse, logistics), marketing and management.
Among our existing shareholders are investors who are operating in Africa.
Competition
There is no other pan-African player. No local competition in most of our markets except South Africa and Egypt.
In South Africa, there is Takealot, who belongs to Naspers. We are focused on the fashion vertical in this market.
In Egypt, there is Souq, which is Amazon. Amazon bought Souq in 2017, Souq is a Middle East player with presence in Egypt. We’ve been growing very well since then, and the reason we are doing very well in Egypt is because we are very agile, and very local. We feel very positive about our position in this market.
Shareholders’ intention
This IPO is all primary, and is about providing the resources to the company and not to selling shareholders.
Why do you have a development centre in Portugal?
People in Africa are super talented and entrepreneurial, there are great developers in Africa; what it has historically lacked is infrastructure. We made the decision in 2012 to host our development team in Portugal because it made sense to do so due to technical reasons. It was the best option for us due to the Internet connection, data centre, cloud.
Do you have any developers working in Africa?
We do, though in limited numbers in Nigeria, Morocco, Egypt and South Africa (100 per cent Africans there). We are focused on providing skills training and development to our local teams across African countries we operate in, to enhance local talent and support. We continue to watch the exciting evolution of development talent closely. Outside of this, we are committed to localising talent & building skill sets, which is what we have done in the last two years in paid marketing, CRM, Shop, HCP, etc.
We are not only a tech company but an e-commerce one. No one else on this continent is developing people with pure e-commerce skills as much as we are, commercial, content development, last mile logistics, operations, customer service, etc.
When do you think you will have all your developers in Africa?
Andela is living proof of this and there are many other initiatives everywhere. Yet, there is a huge need for developers across all economic sectors and it is hard for companies to find enough developers. This is true in Africa, and all the world also, which is why a lot of companies have multiple tech centres and not only one. We already have developers in several countries of Africa and are super committed to recruit and train even more! everything should be in Africa.
Local startup ecosystem
Jumia also acts as an incubator, where a lot of talent passes through and is developed; as we reinforce the value of learning and growth. As a result, we have ignited a vibrant scene of Jumia alumni who now run their own startup companies across Africa and are doing very well. Our aim, as we grow, is to also empower those who encounter Jumia in all levels.