By Jonah Nwokpoku

The year 2014 was an impressive year for e-commerce in Nigeria. All the indices indicated very positive and tremendous improvement for the sector.

As the business year drew to a close, Nigeria’s pioneer online retailer, Jumia.com released an infographic, a data representation detailing its operations for the entire year. The infographic contained facts, figures and mileage the online retailer covered in 2014. It illustrated Jumia’s orders for the entire year, strength of calls received, quality of customer service and brands that dominated sales in the entire year.

For instance, the infographic showed that the orders made on Jumia, when stacked up on each other will be 220 times as tall as the world’s tallest tower, the Hurj Khalifa. The infographic also took into cognisance the number of visits made to the online store, which was more than 200 million page views. It further showed that the farthest distance the retailer covered in delivery of single item was 1,590 Km to Kukawa, Borno State just to deliver a flash drive. Other important information that the infographic captured was the mobile trend which it put at 50 percent including some of its strategic partnerships and Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives and the over 78 million Nigerians reached through its aggressive offline marketing campaign.

Strategic partnership with MTN

In 2014, in a move that further redefined the e-commerce industry in Nigeria, Jumia secured new rounds of investments in the initial sum of €120 million, about N24.5 billion from Africa’s largest telecommunication company, MTN Group, a move that has been seen by many as the strongest alliance in Nigerian corporate circles. This investment, among others made by existing shareholders, strengthened Jumia’s position as the leading online retailer in Africa. This saw the launch of the MTN ‘Be Better’ campaign, which according to CMO, MTN Nigeria, Bayo Adekanbi, “Taps into the desire of Nigerians to live a better life for themselves and their families, looking at various facets of their lives. MTN therefore encourages Nigerians to enrich themselves with the power of information powered by the internet on their mobile devices. This way they can make better decisions, learn and do new things.”

Jumia and MTN also embarked on series of campaigns aimed at sensitizing their customers as to the amazing world of opportunities across both platforms.

The Jumia/MTN connectivity week,

This saw both brands storm the streets with an aim to bridge the gap between customers offline and the over 100,000 products available on Jumia as well as the amazing gadgets and services from MTN across Lagos, Ibadan and Ogun State.

To end what has been a remarkable year MTN launched the ‘Season of Surprises’ campaign, that had some lucky customers get Jumia vouchers for their loved ones.

Providing service excellence

Speaking about the growth of Jumia in 2014, Co-CEO Jumia Nigeria, Nicolas Martin, said;

“This time last year, I said to all my staff that we will be 10 times bigger than what we currently are but interestingly, some of them found it really hard to believe. 2014 is over and guess what, we are over 10 times bigger. I am indeed not surprised, our customers have been all we have and we constantly work to provide them with service excellence making every trip to our store a shopping experience to remember.”

Huge potential of e-commerce in Africa

Also speaking, Co-CEO of Africa Internet Group, Jeremy Hodara, said; “We are very pleased to have been given this show of confidence, which acknowledges Jumia’s success. We consider this recognition of the huge potential of e-commerce in Africa and the strong momentum of Jumia across the continent.”

How Jumia started

In 2012, Jumia started in a garage in Lagos, Nigeria. Before long, the company had built up its own logistics infrastructure – a 90,000 square feet warehouse and its own fleet of drivers capable of delivering products all around 36 states in the country including the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.

In 2013, Jumia became the first African company to win an award at the World Online Retail Awards in Paris, where it was celebrated as the “Best New Retail Launch” of the year. In 2014, Jumia was nominated at the same event for the ‘Best CSR initiative’ in partnership with the ‘1 Child, 1 Book’ initiative by the Tosin Jegede Foundation.

Now, with operations in 10 countries, Jumia is the largest e-commerce company in Africa and has increased astronomically the amount of sales processed through its mobile and desktop applications in 2014, mobile responsible for 50 per cent of that traffic.

With its marketplace platform for third-party merchants, Jumia also offers an entry point for many international and local brands/ SME’s who are looking to enter or grow their presence on the African continent.