I was thinking, what if that is what Jumia is doing, just to take advantage of such loopholes 
One question first: Does Nigeria takes Tax before profit?
If you have a friend within Jumia just ask them what they spend on advertising weekly. Advertising thatās not smart, at that.
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I actually have someone from Jumia working for The Baby Store and from what I could tell from what she shares about their operations here ,to put it dramatically, āWinter is coming.ā
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ROTFL
Maybe, this is where Yudala trumps, as @freshboi_Ekundayo positsā¦
Competitors are part of the marketā¦
Please can someone convert this to Nigerian Naira for meā¦ EUR35.4 Millionā¦ Iām struggling to process thisā¦
You know what Amazon did as they were making loses for the first few years? They made themselves indispensable! They built a holistic brand that stood for exceptional service and reliable products. Konga and Jumia still struggle to match amazon on these two parameters for reasons that are BEYOND THEIR CONTROL.
Everything comes down to the fact that the MAJORITY of the products sold are not made in Nigeria. Because of this, everything they sell is imported (and expensive), and there is a limit to how much people are willing to pay for a product. If it costs me less to buy from the US and send to Lagos via my shipping agent, I will not buy from Konga and Jumia
Their businesses also started off inorganically. Building your business is like falling in love and getting married. When you meet a woman, you start of with light dates, and getting to know each other in a steady organic fashion. What Konga and Jumia did was market to Nigeria aggressively which is akin to proposing to a girl within a day of meeting her. The problem is all the money they spent on marketing was pretty much an offer we couldnāt refuse. A massive ring worth EUR35.4 Million. But guess what, we married them for money, not for love.
Honestly wishing them the best, because I am a vendor listed on their sites, and if they do well, I do too. At the same time, they started off way too aggressively. Nigerians donāt love them. They use them because they have no other options. Iām pretty sure there is room for more competitors who are able to build a BRAND in the right way.
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I think this will be a dumb move
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Removing POD and Adding Escrow which i agree is a useless model is still not the answer, Restructuring Operations and Marketing is and here are the few points.
Operations: Creating a decentralized clearing house or partnering with drop off sites who earn money to provide space for them to drop off jobs for on forwarding to clients leading to Less expense on running mega warehouses and zoning delivery per area to have optimum speed and customer satisfactionā¦
Creating a streamlined workforce that are passionate about delivering an E-commerce future.
Marketing: Cutting down Offline Advertising and using data gathered experiments to create a behavioural pattern to market smarter, they arent using Data enough, they keep giving ads to Agencies yet forget for a growing company the idea is to have a unique brand not multiple confusing voicesā¦( Be Jumia Smart is a horrible horrible ad, the Marketing Manager who signed off should be fired biko) , totally cut down on Billboards that are not strategic, double down on product lines.( Crazy having 100 billboards round Nigeria spending 4 million naira on some boards Quarterly is Sick Cash)
Again the need for physical stores is the shopping trend and behavioural patterns of Nigerians, an estimated 60 million Middle income earners shop weekly( according to myriads of sources like Phillip consulting, BCG, NBS and co) and a fraction of that is online, where are the rest numbers then? Largely offline , Shopriteās Annual Turnover would make you understand why Walmart is planning to move into Nigeria shortly, Jumia and Co can easily set up a Shoprite/SPAR Competition with a hybrid model directed to trigger online shopping like order at store, deliver to your home same day model , or order online and get discounts etc etc. The fact is their user acquisition is stalling, each day millions spent on Ads online and offline that are not converting hence the need to take a stepback and rethink what they are, if they say Nigerias Largest online mall what is the VP to me? i need to see my product to verify what i buy, thats my buying pattern others could be different, they havent yet met their core customers who are hardcore online shoppers.,
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And why would that be? If the biggest Ecommerce firms are having offline routes what stop ours in a market largely dominated by offline usage?
This is a global problem with start-ups today. A lot of these well funded start-ups are too aggressive for their market. From Jumia to Twitter, some of these guys just need to admit that the market was not as big as they anticipated and dial back on the spending
Jumia is in a good placeā¦reduced expenditure y-o-y, reduced revenue too but that can be attributed to the economic downturn and any market that gives you EUR33.0 million revenue in 6 months isnāt to be disregarded out of hand. Iād say with a few more cost-saving measures they can continue their business especially when their Series A lead and C investor has close to $20B in managed funds. Theyāll survive, they all will.
Heard a similar story about their ops from someone who worked there. He said he saw at least 25 $4M+ TVās that had been damaged in transit from returns. They had to pay the merchant back in each case. They should stop advertising and focus on their product in my opinion. Scrap that their grow revenue, profit later mentality. I haveānt met a frequent buyer who hasnāt been dissapointed atleast once. Thatās where they will claw back the losses from, satisfying more customers.
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spot on @sayo
I concur with you sir, a physical prescence rides on the current retail growth the nation is experiencing.
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