The largest information in a month of weighty African headlines was Jumia itemizing on the New York Stock Exchange.
After submitting SEC IPO docs in March, the Pan-African e-commerce firm’s shares started buying and selling on the NYSE April 12, opening at $14.50 below ticker image JMIA. Jumia inventory rose north of 70% on its first day of buying and selling and began this week at $46.
With the general public itemizing, Jumia turned the primary startup from Africa to record on a significant international trade. The IPO raised greater than $200 million for the web enterprise.
The itemizing created one other milestone for Jumia. In 2016, the corporate turned the primary African startup unicorn, reaching a $1 billion valuation after a funding spherical that included Goldman Sachs and MTN.
Founded in Lagos in 2012 with Rocket Internet backing, Jumia now operates a number of on-line verticals in 14 African international locations — from client retail to journey bookings.
Jumia has additionally opened itself as much as Africa’s merchants, with greater than 80,000 energetic sellers on the platform.
Like Amazon, Jumia brings its personal mixture of supporters and critics. On the crucial facet, there are questions of whether or not it’s really an African startup. The mother or father for Jumia Group is included in Germany and present CEOs Jeremy Hodara and Sacha Poignonnec are French.
On the flip facet, authentic Jumia co-founders (Tunde Kehinde and Raphael Afaedor) are Nigerian. The firm is headquartered in Africa (Lagos) and included in every nation wherein it operates (below ECART Internet Services in Nigeria). Jumia pays taxes on the continent, employs 5,128 individuals in Africa (web page 125 of Okay-1) and the CEO of its largest nation operation, Juliet Anammah, is Nigerian.
The Jumia authenticity and variety debates will little question proceed. But the most important query — the driving force behind the VC, the IPO and demand for Jumia’s shares — is whether or not the startup can produce earnings. The firm has generated years of losses, together with detrimental EBITDA of €172 million in 2018 in comparison with revenues of €139 that very same yr.
DHL Africa e-Shop
Call it coincidence or competitors, however the day earlier than Jumia’s IPO, DHL partnered with one other e-commerce startup — MallforAfrica.com — to launch its DHL Africa eShop app for international retailers to promote items to Africa’s shoppers markets.
The platform brings greater than 200 U.S. and U.Okay. retailers — from Neiman Marcus to Carters — on-line in 11 African international locations.
DHL Africa eShop operates utilizing startup MallforAfrica.com’s white label service, Link Commerce.
The new on-line platform takes benefit of the transport big’s present supply construction on the continent to get items to doorsteps close to and much.
DHL’s companion for the brand new app, MallforAfrica, was based in 2011 to unravel challenges international client items corporations face when getting into Africa.
On a B2C stage, DHL Africa eShop brings distinct benefits on a transaction price foundation (i.e. the price of supply), given it’s linked to one of many world’s logistics masters, DHL.
Another part of DHL and MallforAfrica’s partnership is the marketplace for providing e-commerce achievement companies by means of MallforAfrica’s white label Link Commerce service.
This might put the duo on a footing to compete with (or work with) massive e-commerce names getting into Africa and provides one other layer of competitors with Jumia, which presents its personal achievement companies vertical in Africa.
Cathay Africinvest Innovation Fund
There’s a brand new $100 million+ African VC fund within the works. Tunisia-based non-public fairness agency Africinvest teamed up with Cathay Innovation to announce the Cathay Africinvest Innovation Fund, with a goal elevate of $168 million.
Details are nonetheless forthcoming, however the fund will focus totally on Series A to C-stage investments in startups throughout a number of international locations within the areas of fintech, logistics, AI, agtech and edutech. Investments might start as early as 2019, fund co-founder Denis Barrier informed TechChange.
He expects to see robust native exhibiting for startups from throughout Africinvest’s 10 nation places of work in North and Sub-Saharan African. The agency will open an workplace in Johannesburg within the close to future, in keeping with an organization launch.
Zipline expands in Ghana
Zipline, the San Francisco-based UAV producer and logistics companies supplier, launched a program in Ghana for drone supply of medical provides.
Working with the Ghanaian authorities, Zipline will function 30 drones out of 4 distribution facilities to distribute vaccines, blood and life-saving drugs to 2,000 well being amenities throughout the West African nation day by day. Speaking to TechChange, the corporate’s CEO Keller Rinaudo described the Ghana operation as “the largest drone delivery network on the planet.”
The Ghana program provides a second nation to Zipline’s dwell operations. Zipline acquired off the bottom in Rwanda and has leveraged its expertise in East Africa to start testing medical supply companies within the United States. Zipline plans to maneuver from pilot-phase to live-delivery of medical provides within the U.S. someday this summer time.
ConnectMed acquired by Merck
And lastly, German pharmaceutical firm Merck KGaa acquired the expertise of Kenya-based on-line healthtech firm ConnectMed. A 2017 Startup Battlefield Africa competitor, ConnectMed paired up telehealth kiosks to native pharmacies — turning them into on-line clinics the place sufferers use the startup’s tablet-based app to attach dwell to docs for analysis and prescriptions. ConnectMed had obtained grant and seed funds from U.Okay.-based Entrepreneur First and Norway’s Katapult Accelerator.
Merck KGaa (not be confused with U.S. pharmaceutical firm Merck) took over ConnectMed’s telehealth purposes. “Following the handover of the company’s telehealth solutions to Merck…ConnectMed will cease operations,” mentioned an organization launch on the deal. Merck will combine ConnectMed’s platform into its personal CURAFA clinic community in Kenya.
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