Very true,
Things like this keep you wondering about a scripture which I aptly adapt to mean The race is not to eCommerce (solving tangible and difficult problems) but to …
Just to add to your surprise. Imagine that NairaBet (a sport betting company) does better any known startup in Nigeria 
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I wasn’t surprised when I saw those numbers. eCommerce in Nigeria needs time and money and the two big players have not got to that stage and anyone hoping this will click in the next 4 years is still joking. The infrastructure requirements for eCommerce is massive. Amazon, the exact model they are copying did back to back loses for years before they started banking profits. Amazon is still experimenting up until now.
That being said, These guys just need to figure out what works out best for them, they need to focus on the most important things and cut out some of these unnecessary spending on outdoor ads for instance as someone rightly mentioned. Try solve logistics issues and many more.
Maybe both players need to merge for them to scale effectively. 
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I’m of the opinion that the eCommerce guys would be singing a better tune if they managed their customer relationship rightly.
Nigeria always defies logic… Business is a fad and everyone rushes in, get burnt and move on to the next thing.
My prediction? Watch the epayment space and I think Konga is pivoting there sooner than later. Luckily, the PayPals of this world have not set their sight on Nigeria just yet.
Your argument sounds like an oxymoron. Isn’t e-Commerce growth (or lack thereof) a leading indicator for e-Payment growth?
I think Konga or Jumia should have started with mini malls across Nigeria prior to rolling out ecommerce proper. It’s just so much easier to attract customers when you have a bigass sign board on a building that people can walk into. I feel they would’ve done better with that approach. There’d have been more trust and adoption when they roll out ecommerce and I think people would even abuse CoD a lot less.
Oh well. Too late now.
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Not really, there’s more facets to epayments than online trading (in the way we know).
P.S. If I flip it though, most things are e-commerce
These two paragraphs tell the future of e-commerce in Nigeria: offline and online stores. I hope the operators won’t be too proud to re-strategise.
Even at that, Amazon was still doing billions of dollars in sales annually to still retain investor confidence. How much is Konga or Jumia doing in sales annually (for the past 3 years)?
Replicating the Amazon model here will be very difficult. over 90% of Nigerians buy still EVERYTHING offline, and that’s why stores like Shoprites keep on raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue every year. Shoprite Group had an annual turnover of $9.5 billion between June 2013 to June 2014 and I know that this has been on the steady increase; annual revenue from sales in Nigeria alone between 2014 and 2015 was close to $400 million. Maybe Konga and Jumia should take up spaces in many shopping malls across the country and provide an option on their website/app for customers to check out any stuffs they want to buy and then be given an aggregated locations of their physical stores based on the customers’ locations so that they can go straight there to see the items physically (and go through them thoroughly) in the nearest of their stores for purchase. This has several advantages: more people will come to buy from them (as a lot of people, like someone pointed out, visit these e-commerce sites without placing a single order; preferring to go to buy whatever they’ve checked online offline). It will attract new customers: those who haven’t used their apps/websites before can still walk in and make purchases, but then there’ll be Konga or Jumia electronic billboards showcasing what they are about online, such that these ONLY OFFLINE buyers would want to try out the apps/websites. Frequent customers and those who buy large quantity of goods from the Konga or Jumia offline stores in their locality can be provided with free delivery of their purchased goods (using a konga or Jumia-branded truck plastered with info on their offline stores), providing more awareness to their brand. If they put in place these stuffs I highlighted, I’ll buy almost anything from them: it will just take going to their app/website to look up things I want to buy and go to their nearest offline store where they are stocked to get them. And just maybe, they will start raking in those hundreds of millions of $ in sales
Even though payment has its own nuts to cracking, it might hold better potential than eCommerce. PayPal has shown this with its valuation which is far more than eBay at $52billion (remember it was owned by eBay)
I think that the logistics and infrastructure part is the bane of eCommerce.
I remember Yudala said they were going to have offline stores. Has anyone here been to their store before?
Inventory and Experience.
Yudala has offline stores. I know three: One at around Gbagada, another at The Palms mall, Lekki, and another at the Computer Village in Ikeja.
This excellent article from Techpoint highlights the success of Yudala so far.
Yudala has continued to surprise me. Last month, it was reported that they have built Africa’s largest warehouses to meet logistics expectations. They invested in a trio of 220,660 square feet warehouse space in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt, with construction also expected to commence soon on similar structures in Owerri, Kano and Uyo.
Still riding high, as reported by Google, Yudala was one of the top ten Nigerian brands that had the highest spike in traffic over a sustained period in 2015, with Konga and OLX missing the list. All these, coming after they bagged the NCC award for the Most Innovative/Disruptive e-Commerce Company in Nigeria’ in 2015.
Do not forget though, that Yudala is still in the second year. So what went wrong for Konga, Jumia and the other sites? Why did the statistics drop? Is it something they are doing or not doing? How does the financial environment become easier for them? and yes how do we address the pay on delivery issue?
Now, they are the role model for e-commerce business in Nigeria.
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Ah yes. I remember reading that they were starting with three stores. But as for the traffic bit, it might as well be a vanity metric no? I mean they came in fresh, had the money for ads and managed a viral story with the drone thing.
Looking at their stats this year on SimilarWeb, Yudala’s traffic has dropped by about 50% since January while Konga has only had a drop of about 29%.
This ecommerce space sef nawa.
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Gbamest! Offline is where the customers are at.
Did anyone notice in the Kinnevik report that e-commerce & market place on a whole took a big beating. It looks like there are recurring themes for e-commerce/marketplace in emerging markets and developing countries. Or are these losses solely due to recession?
This is like looking for rabbits in the air. Yudala is more focused on offline sales (from my casual observation).
I bought my current phone at Yudala’s store (abi na mall?) in Abuja.
Good luck finding that on SimilarWeb. 
This whole thing is simple… The percentage of Nigerians Buying Online is too small For all the Jumia, konga, dealdey etc. spread the 12% among them. Let them be patient. Some Generation of ppl Need to phase out 1st.
They dont even try to offer better discounts… Offline is cheaper more of the times… Thats the issue
[quote=“Chukwuka_Steve, post:38, topic:7564”]
They dont even try to offer better discounts… Offline is cheaper more of the times
[/quote] This one of their problem i noticed, sadly
i did a little research on this recently and i discovered that some (many) products especially the Beauty and fashion category were much more expensive on these online platforms than the regular offline stores for the exact same product/Brand. And they increased their cost of shipping even within Lagos. How can the e-commerce be attractive to an economical logical person huh?
Secondly, the quality assurance of some of their product is quite low, i know its a marketplace with many sellers but they have to find a way to check what the sellers put on their platform, i have had two not nice experiences and i know some couple of people who have had similar experiences of buying fake products.
These are serious issues that has made the ecommerce unattractive lately
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Mr Rabbit hunter 
. Who’s to say Yudala’s offline sales haven’t dropped too? Perhaps you visit the place everyday?
I bought my current device from Konga. That’s not a KPI. A 50% drop in traffic is more likely to lead to a drop in sales.
Either way we’re all stumbling in the dark here. Unless there’s a public report, we can’t know much.