Jumia Group operates online consumer businesses in 23 countries across the continent connecting more than 50,000 local and international companies with millions of African consumers. The investment will help create thousands of jobs and allow many small businesses to access new markets previously closed to them.
In a statement, Sacha Poignonnec, Co-CEO of Jumia Group said: “We are very glad to be partnering with CDC. Their proven experience in investing in Africa and their expertise on long-term development will be decisive in building a healthy ecosystem around Jumia, developing and accompanying more and more African businesses and entrepreneurs in this shift towards mobile and online. Today, Jumia already reaches 50 million people every month and there is no doubt CDC will be a crucial partner in extending that reach over the next months and years.”
With this cash, Jumia Group will expand its food delivery (Hellofood) and hotel booking (Jovago), as well as online classified ads for general merchandise (Vendito), real estate (Lamudi), jobs (EverJobs) and vehicles (Carmudi) and Jumia Market and Jumia Services to more countries in Africa.
Jumia said the reason of rebranding and merging all its services to one was for convenience. Jumia said sellers will also benefit from this move, by getting access to more traffic and to a greater world of opportunities.
“Uniting all services allows us to better help our customers fulfill their daily aspirations. This is all possible because people connect to our platform to access those services and products in an environment that we have designed for them, addressing their needs and expectations on quality, choice, price, trust and convenience.” said Sacha Poignonnec and Jeremy Hodara, founders and co-CEOs of Jumia.
The founders reiterated that, “Operating under the same brand name reinforces the legitimacy of proposing other services to our customers and to our sellers. We want to have one strong brand that is trusted and loved by our customers across Africa”.
Jumia’s new vision, “Expand your horizons”, expresses the group’s ambition to transform people’s lives through internet, overcoming the ground market challenges of the continent and giving all Africans the opportunity to access high quality services and products everywhere.