Jeremy Hodara and Sacha Poignonnec, the co-founders of Jumia, have resigned from their roles as co-CEOs of the massive African e-commerce company.
Jumia, the largest eCommerce company in Africa, has announced several management changes, including the establishment of a new management board and the resignation of co-founders Jeremy Hodara and Sacha Poignonnec as co-CEOs.
Since Jumia’s founding in 2012, Hodara and Poignonnec have been in charge. During their tenure, the firm has grown to include 11 countries, been listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2019, and developed a logistics and payments division.
The supervisory board has named Francis Dufay as interim CEO while the search for a new CEO is ongoing. Dufay, who has been with Jumia since 2014, has held a number of top leadership positions, most recently serving as executive vice president of Africa and managing the company’s e-commerce operations in Africa. Like Hodara and Poignonnec, Dufay worked at the international consulting company Mckinsey before joining Jumia in 2014.
Antoine Maillet-Mezeray, who was formerly the group CFO of Jumia, has also been elevated by the supervisory board to executive vice president of finance and operations. The corporation will make numerous other senior management changes over the next few months, of which these are the first.
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On its Q3 results call for November 17, 2022, the company will share more details on this announcement and its business priorities.
According to the statement, Mailet-Mezeray and Dufay have been given the goal of “cutting operating losses and establishing the business on a clear route to profitability, including tighter cost discipline, focused monetization activities, and a more simple and efficient organisation.”
Challenges Jumia Has Faced
Since its establishment, Jumia has experienced losses of $57.2 million, as reported in its 2022 second-quarter report.
Jonathan Klein, Chairman of the Supervisory Board, said in the statement: “As we look ahead to the next chapter of Jumia’s journey, we want to bring more focus to the core e-commerce business as part of a more simplified and efficient organization with stronger fundamentals and a clearer path to profitability.”
Even as it consistently cuts its losses, the corporation has always expressed a desire to turn a profit. However, it is unclear when that will happen.
Poignonnec stated in an interview following the release of its Q2 earnings reports that “there is not a silver bullet that can instantly make it profitable.”
Some Background on Jumia
In 2012, Jumia was introduced in Nigeria before being launched in Egypt, Morocco, Ivory Coast, Kenya, and South Africa. By 2018, the corporation had offices in 14 African nations after opening offices in Tunisia, Tanzania, Ghana, Cameroon, Algeria, and Uganda in 2014.
Since Jumia began operating more than ten years ago, it has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Its main online store, JumiaPay, as well as the company’s payment solutions segment, marketplace, and shipping company, are among its products.
The company, one of the most backed African startups ever, has raised over $885 million over six fundraising rounds in the last seven years. Although it was established in Lagos in 2012, its wide geographic reach has allowed it to transcend its Nigerian origins and become a truly pan-African brand.
Jumia has always pursued lofty goals, earning a staggering $45 million in a series A round in 2012 that Rocket Internet coordinated, Blakeney Management, and Millicom Systems. Then, a year after it began operations, it sucked in $150 million in a Series B investment.
The cause of the management-level restructuring at the company hadn’t been made public as of the time of reporting.
