[email protected]: Here are 7 Interesting Facts About Africa’s Largest Ecommerce Platform

Africa’s biggest e-commerce company, Jumia, is celebrating its seventh year in operation. The online marketplace has for the past 7 years changed the face of online retailing in Nigeria and Africa as customers and merchants have turned to it to make their purchases.

To celebrate this feat achieved by the company, here are 6 things you didn’t know about the company.

• A leader in the ecommerce industry, Jumia launched in Nigeria in 2012 with an initial multimillion-dollar investment from Rocket Internet. It was founded by Sacha Poignonnec and Jeremy Hodara of Africa Internet Group (AIG) alongside two Africans – Tunde Kehinde, a Nigerian, and Raphael Kofi Afaedor, a Ghanaian, who both left the company in 2015.

• After its launch in Nigeria in 2012, the company expanded to Egypt, Morocco, Ivory Coast, Kenya and South Africa in the same year. Now, the company is in 14 countries across Africa with its headquarters in Lagos, Nigeria.

• The platform currently has 6,000,000 products listed, from over 50,000 international and national brands. It is also the top placed ecommerce startup in Nigeria with over 15 million monthly visitors.
• In 2016, Jumia became the first African unicorn company after being valued at over $1 billion and founding company, AIG, changed its name to Jumia. This valuation was met after the comapny raised about $327 million in funding from Goldman Sachs and MTN in 2016.

• In the same year, Jumia was ranked among the MIT 50 Smartest Companies globally and retained its place in 2017. The list is made up of superstar companies dominating the economy by exploiting a growing gap in digital competencies.
• The shopping giant has a third-party payment solution, Jumia Pay, which provides a more convenient payment method for its users. It was launched in 2016.

• Earlier this year in April, Jumia went public on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and raised $196 million in net proceeds although it aimed to raise $245.7 million. Its share price was initially offered at $14.50, but rose to over $22.45 before the end of the day.