Jumia Market, one of the e-commerce websites in the Jumia ecosystem has allegedly been shut down by Jumia.
This comes a few months after it officially rebranded to Jumia from African Internet Group. The rebranding meant that the hotel booking platform formerly known as Jovago rebrands to Jumia Travel, the food delivery company HelloFood is now Jumia Food; the community market place Kaymu rebrands to Jumia Market.
This rebranding was seen by insiders as unfavourable to Jumia Market (Kaymu) because it has the same mode of operation with Jumia Mall. As such, this sudden shut down was inevitable.
In addition, efforts by Jumia Market to distinguish itself from Jumia Mall was not yielding any results even though they planned to go local. For example, if you are looking for a fashion designer, you can get one on Jumia Market. We guess this move came too late.
At the same time, Jumia is the main investor in Jumia Market and since they have decided to pull out, it means the liquidation of the e-commerce website.
Despite this, we also hear rumours that some of the workers of Jumia Market will be moved to Jumia Mall while others may be retrenched as some of them have been asked to go home.
For now, the website of Jumia Market is still live. We do not know what will happen to the site for now. But we assure you that we will disclose more info as this story develops.
Update:
Jumia Market has just sent an email to its buyers which Innovation Village received. This email is titled “Jumia Market will stop operating in order to offer to you one unified platform, Jumia!”
