Brands/Products
Jumia Prioritises Sellers’ Growth for 8th Anniversary Campaign
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
Vendors and sellers on the Jumia platform have been educated on how to key into marketing activities lined up for the company’s 8th anniversary celebrations slated for June 22 to July 5, 2020.
Last Saturday, the Jumia team held an online anniversary conference with vendors and sellers to lecture them on how to benefit from the high sales turnover usually experienced during the anniversary period.
The company said the period offer great commercial opportunities to them for the growth of their businesses.
“This is an unprecedented time for a vendor to be online. Just to give you a grasp of the milestone achieved by Jumia only in the month of May.
“We recorded a daily highest number of vendors with at least one sale across the full year; we recorded the daily highest number of buying customers across the full year; we also recorded daily highest number of individual products purchased on the platform since the beginning of the year.
“What I have listed means that more people are actually coming on the platform at a faster pace than expected and buying all sorts of products and varieties across categories,” the CEO of Jumia Nigeria, Mr Massimiliano Spalazzi, said at the virtual meeting.
Mr Spalazzi, who said the anniversary campaign is tagged Stronger Together, noted that realities enforced on global economy by COVID-19 makes eCommerce a veritable channel to boost business and the Jumia anniversary campaign will be a catalyst for vendors to raise the bar of their sales to the next level.
“We want to celebrate the anniversary by continuing to serve the needs of our customers who want to shop more in complete safety from their homes, by providing the two simplest, but the most important things: best prices and wider assortment.
“This anniversary will be a celebration of solidarity and support, and each of you vendors and sellers can benefit from this event at the very best to boost and raise the bar of your sales to the next level,” he said.
On her part, Chief Operating Officer, Jumia Nigeria, Ms Omolola Oladunjoye, engaged vendors on what to do and how they can key into the chain of promotional activities in Jumia anniversary campaign for their business growth.
“We have outlined mechanisms that vendors can select from to double or triple their turnover within this period. For instance, sellers who opt for the sponsorship or promotional program will experience increased visibility and sales.
“We have testimonies from sellers who joined these programmes for the last Black Friday. It’s a period of surge in traffic with millions of customers coming on the platform daily.
“We advise that they join with their best and fastest selling products that fit into current trend and season, do competitive pricing, upload as many assortments as possible including high-quality images and detailed descriptions, and also stock up to as not to miss out on the sale uplift.
“We also strongly advise that sellers do shipment of orders within 24 hours to meet the timely needs of customers to prevent cancelled orders and returned shipments,” she said.
She added that dedicated support lines have been put in place to provide further clarifications for sellers and prospective vendors willing to sign up their wares on the Jumia platform during the period.
Established in 2012, Jumia is a leading e-commerce platform in Africa.
By Aduragbemi Omiyale
An institutional investor, First Ally Capital, has strengthened a leading Nigerian financial technology company, Mathesis Analytics, to scale its proprietary credit decisioning infrastructure.
It made this possible by injecting fresh capital into the firm, which specialises in AI-powered credit decisioning infrastructure, an action that will directly support the growth and scaling of Mathesis’ core mission of providing the intelligence and infrastructure needed to bridge the credit gap for millions of unscored or underscored individuals across Nigeria.
With this investment, Mathesis will enable financial institutions to confidently assess and extend credit to borrowers who lack a formal credit history by leveraging an expanded pool of alternative behavioural and transactional data.
To date, Mathesis’ systems have supported more than 8 million loans for over 2 million unique borrowers in Nigeria, and the company is actively deploying its infrastructure to establish a growing pan-African footprint.
With the investment from First Ally Capital, Mathesis is well positioned to transform how the credit ecosystem operates, driving financial inclusion in partnership with lenders across the continent.
A significant barrier to credit access in Nigeria, which prides itself on being Africa’s largest economy, is data fragmentation. Borrowers frequently build positive financial behaviours across multiple digital platforms by repaying microfinance loans, saving through fintech wallets, or servicing Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) facilities.
However, under traditional credit infrastructure, these achievements remain invisible to new lenders.
Mathesis addresses this challenge through the concept of Personal Equity—the quantified expression of an individual’s financial behaviour aggregated across every institution with which they have transacted.
By translating these disparate signals into a precise, portable measure of creditworthiness, Mathesis creates a comprehensive credit identity that reflects the full breadth of a person’s financial life.
“True financial inclusion cannot be achieved in a vacuum; it requires structural collaboration in which lenders and fintech companies work as partners within the ecosystem.
“This investment from First Ally Capital validates our approach to reshaping credit infrastructure. By quantifying Personal Equity, we empower lenders to safely look beyond the constraints of formal credit histories and recognise a borrower’s true creditworthiness. This capital enables us to accelerate our pan-African expansion while maintaining the robust, institutional-grade infrastructure our partners rely on,” the chief executive of Mathesis Analytics, Winston Osuchukwu, stated.
On his part, the chief executive of First Ally Capital, Mr Ebenezer Olufowose, said, “At First Ally Capital, we pride ourselves on being a one-stop destination for financial solutions, offering a diverse portfolio of services ranging from investment banking and asset management to trusteeship, inclusive banking, and real estate.
“Our investment in Mathesis Analytics reflects our strong belief in the company’s vision and our commitment to supporting forward-thinking enterprises that deliver excellence.”
By Aduragbemi Omiyale
The chief executive of Canal+ Africa, Mr David Mignot, has disclosed that MultiChoice is now fully integrated into the media group.
Mr Mignot disclosed this via a statement issued on Thursday, noting that this development marks a new phase in the evolution of one of Africa’s leading pay television operators.
He noted that the integration positions MultiChoice within a global media organisation with an extensive international footprint.
“MultiChoice is now a full subsidiary of a truly international media group operating in 70 countries. The group was founded in France, is listed in London and Johannesburg, and has a strong African presence with operations in more than 45 countries,” Mr Mignot said.
The statement underscores the scale of the combined business, highlighting Canal+’s global reach alongside its significant investments across Africa.
The completion of the transaction is expected to strengthen MultiChoice’s position in the African media and entertainment market by giving it access to the broader resources, expertise and international capabilities of the Canal+ Group, while reinforcing the group’s commitment to the continent.
MultiChoice operates across sub-Saharan Africa through platforms including DStv and GOtv, serving millions of subscribers with entertainment, sports and news content.
By Adedapo Adesanya
FoodCourt, a Nigerian cloud kitchen startup backed by Y Combinator, has suspended operations after months of unpaid salaries and mounting debts to vendors triggered a staff strike and forced the company to halt customer orders, according to a report by TechCabal.
The publication reported that customers first noticed on March 4 that they could no longer place orders through the FoodCourt app after the company disabled ordering as kitchen workers, delivery personnel and branch staff embarked on strike over unpaid wages. The company also owed outstanding payments to vendors.
By April 19, FoodCourt had temporarily shut its last operating branch after suspending activities across its Lagos and Abuja locations while seeking fresh funding and restructuring the business, according to the report.
The company’s chief executive, Mr Henry Nneji, said the decision to pause operations was not caused by a single issue but by a combination of operational, organisational and working-capital challenges.
“It’s important to clarify that the decision to pause operations wasn’t driven by one single issue. We reached a point where it became clear that continuing to patch those issues while operating wasn’t the right long-term decision,” he said.
“The objective is to build a stronger business than the one that existed before the suspension. We fully intend to bring FoodCourt back,” he added in an emailed response.
The company acknowledged outstanding obligations to employees, vendors, riders and service providers, but declined to disclose the number of affected workers or the total amount owed. It said efforts were underway to resolve the liabilities as part of its restructuring process.
It was also reported that the startup’s financial difficulties worsened after expansion into additional locations increased operating costs, while its cloud kitchen model came under pressure from rising labour, logistics, food and marketing expenses.
Despite the shutdown, Mr Nneji said FoodCourt intends to relaunch after completing its restructuring, adding that the company believes demand for its products remains strong.
Founded in 2021 by Henry Nneji and Paul Adokiye Iruene, FoodCourt operates cloud kitchens under multiple virtual restaurant brands through its consumer app. According to TechCabal, the startup had previously disclosed raising $1.7 million, delivering more than one million meals and reaching $4.3 million in annual recurring revenue by the end of 2024.
