Jumia Exits Cameroon, Alibaba Records Milestones
As I noted a few days ago, I expect Jumia to exit many ecommerce operations, to cut cost and move deeper into fintech. Those are things the New York investors want to see. Jumia is exiting Cameroon, and that is just the beginning. This aligns with my note: “Building a pan-African ecommerce business is hopeless until 2022 and markets are not patient to help Jumia at this moment.”
E-commerce giant, Jumia has shut down its Cameroon operations five years after launching. Jumia Group CEO & co-founder, Jeremy Hodara told TechCabal the commerce platform "as it is run today is not suitable to the current context in Cameroon." However, Jumia's classifieds portal will remain functional for buyers and vendors to do business. It's been a rocky year for the e-commerce platform since its shaky outing on the New York Stock Exchange and failure to raise its share prices following a fraud allegation. Last week, 2019 Q3 reports revealed that the company had lost $180.1 million for the first nine months of 2019 alone compared to $129.2 million in 2018. At this time, Jumia can still lay claim to having a presence in 13 African markets including Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Egypt, Ghana, Morocco, Uganda, Tanzania, Senegal, Rwanda, Ivory Coast, Tunisia, and Algeria (TC Daily)
But as Jumia struggles in Africa, Alibaba is setting new records. On the Alibaba's Singles Day—the biggest shopping event in the world—apparently saw over $16.3 billion in purchases take place in a mere 90 minutes. That's more than half the total takings for last year's Singles Day, notes Fortune newsletter.
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Alibaba Group Holding, China’s largest e-commerce company, reported Friday that third quarter sales rose 40% while profits nearly tripled, outperforming market expectations and defying the generally gloomy outlook for the world’s second-largest economy.
Alibaba, China’s most valuable company with a market capitalization of $460 billion, said sales in the three months to September 30 gained $16.7 billion. Net income, boosted by a one-time gain related to equity interest in a sister company, increased by $10 billion.
The company, which claims a two-thirds share of China’s e-commerce market, credited strong growth in its Taobao and T-mall retail platforms, as well as its nascent cloud computing business.
BABA’s shares, which have risen nearly 30% in value since the beginning of this year, gained more than 2% on Friday.
The company’s solid financial results suggest Chinese consumer spending, at least online, remains robust, even as exports decline and overall growth continues to slow.