The popularity of Jumia has gone far beyond the shores of this continent and was rated by Amazon’s Alexa as the most visited e-commerce website in Nigeria. Jumia despite emerging from a German start-up incubator has now become deeply rooted in African soil.
Jumia, which is often referred to as Amazon or Alibaba of Africa, has raised the bar in the e-commerce market through its unique features and great feats. Some of which are:
Cash Payment on Delivery Policy: Jumia adapted its payment methods to match the preferences of African consumers. This policy, which is one of the key drivers for Jumia’s growth, allows customers to pay in cash to the delivery agent. It also serves to instill confidence in consumers, who are still wary of making online payments. This also helped to engender trust among sellers and buyers in the African market.
Delivery Solutions: One aspect Jumia has been an e-commerce enabler in its innovation in logistics. With logistics being one of the main challenges of e-commerce, Jumia, apart from having third-party logistics partners, created its own fleet of delivery trucks. This has helped the company overcome geographical limitations.
Stock Exchange: Jumia also led the way for e-commerce in Africa when it went public on the New Year Stock Exchange (NYSE) in April 2019 and raised $196 million in net proceeds. It was also recently ranked among the fifty smartest companies in the world by MIT, a great achievement that has brought global recognition in the field of e-commerce not only to Nigeria but to Africa as a whole.
The employment rate in Africa: Asides servicing the needs of consumers and businesses, Jumia has created employment for many Africans. With over 5,000 employees, Jumia is generating employment in engineering, IT, online marketing and web development across Africa. At this rate, it is obvious Jumia is going to contribute significantly towards the three million jobs expected from online marketplaces by 2025. Recently, it opened a tech hub in Egypt for the development of JumiaPay.
