Jumia, the African leader in e-commerce and Gozem, one of the leading startups in the urban transport niche, saw with relief the end of a difficult year 2020 for its activities in Africa. And to start over, these companies, both founded by young French people, have a recipe: innovation and investment.
Founded in eleven African countries, Jumia is the African equivalent of the American giant Amazon. The company founded by Sacha Poignonnec had a difficult year in 2020. “On the one hand, customers could continue to shop in stores and supermarkets fairly calmly, but on the other hand, we had many restrictions in terms of logistics and restrictions also in terms of supply, with our sales staff. who have difficulty importing or moving their goods, says the contractor.
Gozem, which since 2018 offers motorcycle taxi booking services in Togo and Benin via mobile application, has had a rather bad experience of curfews and school closures. “This resulted in a reduction of our activity by about 4%, so it was obviously not so good news for a start that is starting to grow and that above all needs external funds to continue. To develop. But it allowed us to use our resources to improve our offering, explains Grégory Costamagna, co-founder of Gozem.
For him, improving the offer means both diversification of services and conquest of new markets. “We are developing our ‘super-app strategy’ with an e-commerce offering developed during Covid-19. And during the fourth quarter, we acquired the leader in food delivery in Togo. Finally, we are expanding into new markets, as we open Gabon within thirty days. and we are going to Cameroon in the next quarter. ”
At Jumia, Sacha Poignonnec made the same effort. After launching Jumia Food, a meal delivery service, and Jumia Pay, a mobile payment service, Africa’s number one in e-commerce is making its logistics chain profitable by putting it at the service of third-party companies.
“Until now, only Jumia sales people could use Jumia logistics. And they could do that for packages that matched Jumia transactions. Thanks to this transparency, not only our “sellers”, our sellers, can direct packages related to other parts of their business, but also third party companies, small and medium-sized companies or others, can use Jumia Logistic to ensure shipping and delivery of their package. For example, we have a bank in Nigeria that sends credit cards to its customers via Jumia logistics, says Sacha poonnec.
If Gozem expects its first gains from 2023, Jumia, which is now listed on the New York Stock Exchange, risks not setting a date. But Jumia is improving its profitability and now has more than seven million customers in Africa.
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