With all the AIG companies essentially going under the Jumia brand name, Jumia will now house companies that offer services ranging from job search and real estate classifieds to food delivery and auto ecommerce.
Pulse Tech has gathered from several sources that Rocket Internet ‘s African arm, Africa Internet Group (AIG), is integrating all its African companies to become one very big Jumia brand in all of its markets – offering everything from meals from your local restaurant to products from your local merchant to the latest tech gadgets from international brands – from Nigeria to Kenya and beyond.
While the public announcement is to be made during a press conference called ‘AIG’s State of the Union’ to meet the ‘No 1 Ecommerce Platform in Africa ’ by invitation of Jumia in Lagos, Nigeria, to be held on Thursday, June 23, 2016 (see press invite here: http://us13.campaign-archive1.com/?u=8d3af9e72b6e89719b81c1a54&id=71b9c28d86 » ), Pulse has already obtained the relevant information.
Practically, this means that the AIG brands Hellofood , Carmudi , Lamudi,
Kaymu and others will completely go away to be replaced by additions to the Jumia name. So Hellofood will become
Jumia Food, Kaymu will become Jumia
Market and so on. These are to be hosted on sub-domains of the main Jumia page – so e.g. Kaymu is to be on market.jumia.com. When accessing market.jumia.com one can already find a log-in page that suggests something is being built there: http://market.jumia.com/ .
While it will become 100% clear which brands will be integrated in which way (some may still stay alive for a while) during the press conference in Lagos next week, the overall move clearly suggests a short-, mid- and long-term
focus of AIG on Jumia and a concentration of its effort on the one-stop-shop brand.
Right now, there is no sure indicator, or statement from the company, on what the real thinking behind this move is, but there are speculations. While some of them may be answered on Thursday next week, some may still be a bit too far off for the company to comment at all:
As a back-ground, over the last six months, AIG’s large shareholder and Jumia’s initial founder Rocket Internet’s share price has dropped to an all-time low of EUR 18 (NGN 3,600) from a starting price of EUR 42.50 at start (NGN 8,500) – struggling to convince its investors of its global internet roll-out strategy.
Jumia’s revenue in Africa on the other side has dipped by 37% year over year
( https://www.rocket-internet.com/sites/default/files/investors/160531%20RISE%20Q1%2016%20Results_0.pdf » ), along with the complete disappearance of EasyTaxi (another AIG company) from the African market and a difficult standing specifically of AIG’s classifieds assets on the continent.
At the same time, over the past few months, Jumia’s parent company, AIG, has raised over $400 million in funding – to set it on course for a $1 billion valuation – from various companies like US finance powerhouse Goldman Sachs ; French telecom company, Orange and French insurer, AXA .
This combination of high funding for the group on the one side and struggling performance on the other side suggests
bigger moves for ultimate success are planned for which concentration on the main business, Jumia, is crucial.
Only then, the group will achieve what has been long rumored and just been re-confirmed as its main goal : a public listing of its shares, i.e. what is commonly known as an IPO.
This would make Jumia/AIG the first listed pure internet/e-commerce company on the continent with a clear focus on its core e-commerce offering.
Pulse will further follow up on this goal, but expects comments to be rare for now. So far Jumia/AIG’s comment was: no comment on anything.
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Source: Pulse
IkemSamuelBlog 