Jumia Group, the parent company of Jumia Marketplace, has a wide range of businesses including e-commerce, logistics, security, travel car rental and many other industries. Jumia Marketplace is just the e-commerce business module of Jumia Group. The platform was officially launched in 2012 in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest port city, and is now the largest e-commerce platform in the African market. As of April 2019, JumiaMarketplace has launched online trading operations in 14 African countries, of which Nigeria is the site with the largest traffic volume for Jumia Marketplace. For the convenience of readers, Jumia is used to refer to Jumia Marketplaco below.
On April 12, 2019, Jumia Technologies, Africa’s largest e-commerce operator, known as the African version of “Alibaba”, was officially listed on the New York Stock Exchange. On the first day of listing, Jumia’s share price surged 75.59% to close at US$25.46, with a total market value of US$1.944 billion, or approximately RMB 13 billion. It became the first African “unicorn company” to be listed in the United States. This move was met with tepid response. In the hot April day, it was like a muffled thunder that shocked the majority of cross-border e-commerce merchants.
The Jumia platform was officially launched in 2012. For the first time, a total of 6 sites were launched, namely Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Egypt, Morocco and Cote d’Ivoire. However, in the first five years since the platform was launched, the Jumia platform was mainly conducted by local sellers, and the platform has always recruited Chinese sellers by invitation. It was not until 2017 that five other Jumia international sites except South Africa began to open to Chinese sellers. In 2018, they officially opened to Chinese sellers. In March 2019, the Jumia platform officially opened its seventh international site, Cameroon, to Chinese sellers.
Currently, the seven international sites where Chinese sellers can reside are: Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Morocco, Cote d’Ivoire, Cameroon and Ghana. Except for Ghana and Cameroon, the other five sites have launched corresponding overseas warehouses. New sellers on the Jumia platform must first start on the Nigerian site. After operating for a period of time and meeting certain requirements, the investment manager will notify the seller to open other sites.