Connectnigeria Articles

Jumia, Nigeria’s #1 online retailer celebrates one year anniversary. In June 2012, Jumia started the largest ecommerce website in the country. Twelve months later, the company has served over half a million customers – changing the way people shop in Nigeria. This has made in less than 1 year, Jumia the 4th most visited Nigerian website: www.jumia.com.ng.

Recently, Jumia secured with its affiliated companies a further $35M in funding from Millicom. This funding comes in addition to recent investments from J.P. Morgan and Summit Partners. The funding, which represents the largest investment in a Nigerian eCommerce startup, allows Jumia to continue its rapid growth and serve even more customers across Nigeria. Concurrently, Jumia announced it’s move to move to a new 90,000 sqft warehouse in Lagos which will house 500 employees and create the largest ecommerce campus in West Africa. Co-founder Raphael Afaedor: “In the beginning we were three employees dreaming of being the largest ecommerce retailer in Nigeria. Now, we have more than 500 employees and offer Nigerian youth a unique opportunity to work in a fast-paced, world class start up. We focus every day on delivering a fantastic shopping experience for our customers, through the widest range of products in Nigeria and fast, secure and stress-free delivery. Our new warehouse allows us to even grow further..” Jumia’s anniversary will be celebrated with a first anniversary e-commerce conference, various fashion events, special discounts, new partnerships, new changes to its website and the education campaign “delivering smiles”. Co-founder Tunde Kehinde: “After this tremendous one year run we want to say thank you to our employees, customers, partners and all Nigerians. Since our creation we have supported education programs to empower children and we want to use this anniversary to give back to society.” For their 1st anniversary Jumia carries out two activities themed “delivering smiles”. 1. In June, Jumia will donate one book to a child in partner schools, for every book bought on Jumia. In addition, Jumia will visit schools with the ‘1 Child 1 Book’ foundation and the CSR co-sponsor DHL to give out books to less privileged pupils. 2. Jumia will team up with ACE Africa Charity, www.aceafricacharity.org and sell its ACE wrist bands. All returns will go to the charity. Jumia will also promote ACE to their half a million social media followers. Additionally, Jumia announced today its partnership with MasterCard to use MasterCard’s Internet Gateway Service to make credit card payments safer and easier. The Company announced further exclusive partnerships with Dell, Intel and Nokia, among others offering special prices and exclusive products.