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The story
Founded by Jérémy Hodara in 2012.1
In 2012, Jeremy Hodara and Sacha Poignonnec, ex-McKinsey consultants, founded Jumia along with Tunde Kehinde and Raphael Kofi Afaedor.
Jumia was launched in Nigeria in 2012 and expanded to five other countries: Egypt, Morocco, Ivory Coast, Kenya and South Africa. In 2014, the company launched offices in Tunisia, Tanzania, Ghana, Cameroon, Algeria and Uganda, and by 2018 it was present in 14 African countries. In Egypt, Jumia has been trying to categorize itself as one of the leading e-commerce websites.
In June 2013, Jumia launched Jumia Travel, a hotel booking platform, and Jumia Food, a food delivery platform. Jumia Deals was launched in April 2015. In 2017, Jumia launched Jumia One, an app that enables customers to pay bills. The same year, Jumia launched JumiaPay, a secure payment system. This was followed by the Jumia lending program.
In South Africa, Jumia operates under the brand name Zando, focusing only on online fashion retail.
At the end of 2015, the founders of Jumia appointed Juliet Anammah as the CEO of Jumia Nigeria so that they could concentrate on global control of the company. Massimiliano Spalazzi took over from Anammah as CEO in Nigeria in January 2020 and Anammah was appointed chairwoman of Jumia Nigeria and the Head of Institutional Affairs, Africa.
In 2015, Jumia generated $234 million in revenue, a 265% growth from 2014. In 2016, Jumia became the continent's first unicorn being valued at over 1 billion USD.
In late November 2018, Jumia partnered with cryptocurrency company Telcoin to enhance payment service capabilities throughout their areas of operation. The same month, Jumia and Carrefour signed a partnership to sell online products in Africa.
In April 2019, Jumia went public on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and raised $196 million in net proceeds. The share price, initially offered at $14.50, rose more than 200% in the first three trading sessions. However, after reaching a peak of nearly $50 on 1 May 2019, the share value declined to under $5/share by year's end.
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In November 2019, Jumia announced the suspension of its e-commerce operations in Cameroon. Jumia later ceased operations in Tanzania effective 27 November 2019. The company said it needed to focus its resources on other markets and the decision would help it achieve greater success in the future. On 9 December 2019, Jumia suspended Jumia Food in Rwanda. Jumia, however, vowed to continue doing business online in those countries on the classifieds portals, previously called Jumia Deals.
On 9 December 2019, Travelstart entered into a distribution and commercial agreement with Jumia Travel, Jumia's hotel booking platform, to power the latter's pan-African online travel booking portal. Under the agreement, Travelstart took control of the sales, fulfilment and customer service aspects of Jumia Travel online booking websites in all its operating territories.
In 2020, Jumia's total sales value of Fast-Moving Consumer Goods grew by 13 percentage points, from 44% in 2019, according to the Jumia Africa E-commerce Index 2021.
In 2020, Jumia ranked 7th among the top 10 influential brands in Egypt. In 2021, Jumia launched its technology centre in Egypt to provide its services to the Egyptian market as well as Africa at large.
COVID-19 accelerated the growth of e-commerce and digital entrepreneurship in Africa and more women embraced digital business. On the Jumia platform, over a third of businesses in Côte d'Ivoire and over half in Kenya and Nigeria are owned by women according to IFC.
In November 2022, Jumia announced leadership changes after positing significant financial losses, with the appointment of a new management board and acting CEO, while Jeremy Hodara and Sacha Poignonnec, co-CEOs, resigned from their roles. The supervisory board appointed Francis Dufay as aActing CEO and elevated Antoine Maillet-Mezeray to executive vice president finance & operations. In February 2023, the supervisory board appointed Dufay as CEO after spending three months as acting CEO. The said it was focused on making "radical changes" around better cost management.
In December 2023, Jumia announced plans to discontinue food delivery across seven markets, shifts focus to expanding physical goods business. In October 2024, Jumia made the strategic decision to exit South Africa and Tunisia, choosing to focus on Nigeria and other key markets. This move was likely driven by the company's desire to consolidate its resources and strengthen its position in its home market, Nigeria. In February 2026, Jumia exited the Algerian market, a country that had made up around 2% of its gross merchandise value(GMV).
From Wikipedia’s article on Jumia, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.8