Last week, pan-African e-commerce platform Jumia said it was discontinuing its food delivery service, Jumia Food.
However, of all the streamlining efforts, its exit from the food delivery business across seven markets was the most unexpected.
This trend might persist with its exit from the food delivery business.
Jumia’s statement last week said that the company’s food delivery business wasn’t suitable to its market’s operating environment and macroeconomic conditions.
Also, how fast will the company grow the physical goods business to make up for this food delivery exit?
Qogita – a two-sided ecommerce wholesale marketplace aimed at retailers largely in the health and beauty sectors – has raised €80 million ($86 million) in a Series B round led by London’s Dawn Capital and Accel.
Targeting SME e-commerce retailers businesses that want to deal with a more ‘all-in-one’ wholesale platform, Qogita is not dissimilar to Faire.com in the US (which has raised $1.7 billion to date) and Ankorstore out of France (which has raised €365 million).
In a statement, Norman Fiore, General Partner at Dawn Capital, said: “It is remarkable how complex and completely opaque product procurement still is for small and medium-sized businesses targeting the $6 trillion e-commerce market.
Qogita has built an all-in-one platform to address the entire wholesale procurement process.”Luca Bocchio, Partner at Accel, also added: “The B2B wholesale market in Europe is huge, but also fragmented and complex.
And in April, Ankorstore launched a new membership programme for independent retailers in Europe, removing minimum checkout amounts and waiving heavy/fragile shipping fees, plus a 90 day BNPL offer.
Kenyan e-commerce and fintech platform for mass market consumers Copia Global has appointed John Lazar, the ex-CEO of Metaswitch, a Microsoft subsidiary, to its board off the back of $20 million in new funding.
Without the capital to get it all the way to profitability, it made sense to hold off there.
Both companies have encountered headwinds that question the sustainability of B2C e-commerce in Africa even though they operate different e-commerce models.
However, both platforms are confronted with distinct objectives: Copia strives to achieve profitability in a single market, Kenya, while Jumia has to battle it out across 11 markets.
The founder and chairman noted that once the e-commerce company achieves profitability in the East African market, it plans to extend operations to 14 other countries it has strategically mapped out.
TUNL, a South African parcel shipping platform, has secured $1 million in pre-seed funding from investors, including Founders Factory Africa, Digital Africa Ventures, E4E Africa, and Jozi Angels.
The current challenges in cross-border shipping cost African businesses an estimated $50 billion annually in missed opportunities.
TUNL’s founders identified a recurring issue among small- and medium-sized South African merchants during the pandemic: Shipping costs sometimes surpassed the value of their products.
On the TUNL platform, merchants offer customers various shipping options during checkout.
South Africa is known for its wine industry, with exports reaching 368.5 million liters last year.
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