Ecommerce in Nigeria continues to grow and Jumia is one of the success stories in the sector. Doerr in this interview shares insight into the industry; he also spoke on Jumia as a startup – including an overview of Jumia’s operations across Africa in addition to new markets.
Without mincing words, ecommerce is huge in Nigeria. What’s the important thing now for the industry?
Most important thing is mobile. We see it on our platform – most of our traffic comes from mobile devices. Mobile is the most important thing. Internet on mobile device brings internet to Nigeria. There are not so many landlines here when you compare to US and Europe which means mobile is a revolution.
The mobile phone market is so important to Nigeria because it connects the people – it makes it possible for people to buy online products they can’t afford to buy – especially in areas and cities outside Lagos. I think mobile will take Nigeria and Nigerians to the next level. Government and all stakeholders – including telecos and OEMs and us, we should work to make it possible for every Nigerian to have a smartphone and every Nigerian has access to the internet because it makes them do so many things.
Jumia is in 15 African markets but not in South Africa. Why is this so?
We have a sister company in South Africa which is called Zando and is focusing on fashion. Jumia is in 15 countries now in Africa and in South Africa we have Zando. Our operations in other African countries are growing and we are proud of them, but Jumia Nigeria is the biggest in Africa.
We are glad to see growth in other African markets – we are seeing new markets which will be launched soon. We are proud of the Jumia story of being the largest retailer in Africa.
Is there any space for a third big ecommerce company in Nigeria?
There will be a lot of ecommerce platforms, but not only a business model like Jumia, it would be business modules like Kaymu – other business modules supporting Jumia with their services. There is a lot of space for innovation; there is a lot of space for startups. There will be more money coming into this country. When you look at Nigeria, the citizens are so young and tech-driven. There will be lots of development of ecommerce in Nigeria, not just the classical Jumia model – there are several different ecommerce types and these kinds of models will develop in Nigeria. We look forward to seeing lots of companies joining the market and we are seeing opportunities to work with each other.
Internet has so many opportunities beside ecommerce and there are so many services which could be launched.
Jumia has been in Nigeria for three years now, and we are educating Nigerians to be entrepreneurs, to understand mobile, ecommerce and the internet. We have ex-Jumians who left Jumia after 2 – 3 yearss to start their own companies. We are proud of them and we help them to launch other startups with the knowledge Jumia brought to the market.
We ourselves are not just as a company building jobs; we see ourselves helping and growing entrepreneurs, building companies. We have a long term goal not just to build our company but to build the Nigerian ecommerce and internet market.
Many see Jumia as a foreign company with only eyes on making profits and not developing the local market. How would you respond?
We are a Nigerian company even though we have big foreign investors such as Milicom. These companies bring money to Nigeria in the form of investments in this country. We invest in Nigeria, in the people. We educate people on ecommerce in Nigeria. We build thousands of jobs including those working in our delivery fleet, we built our own logistics company – so we developed the whole market and the people we’ve invested in. We believe so much in the Nigerian market.
Is Jumia making profits now?
We are in a growing phase of a classical startup. In this growing phase, you are not looking so much at the profit because it’s an investment – in the business, advertising, logistics, infrastructure – these are investments and you don’t expect immediate profit. It would take a while for us to make profit and this is a normal stage for startups including Amazon and other companies.
We are building the largest ecommerce and retailer in Africa. To do that you need to invest a lot. If people see what Jumia is investing in Nigeria they will understand that the Jumia Story is the story of Africa.
It is hard to say how long it will take for us to begin to make profits but our investors are looking forward that this will happen soon and when we look at our numbers, at how fast we grow, the success we have, we are very confident that this will happen soon. The normal growth path of a startup is to reach this stage. We are very confident we will be the biggest ecommerce company in Nigeria for the next 100 years and we will provide better services for the next 100 years. We will do the breakeven at some point and it will be a success story for Africa.
Our investors believe in us, they trust the business module and the people working in Jumia and I’m confident the Jumia story will continue, there’s no question about that.
