Jumia Travel has shut down in Nigeria. According to reports reaching Techawk, the travel and flight marketplace of the Amazon of Africa shut down this morning after an address by the Managing Director of Jumia Travel, Omolara Adagunodo and the Head of Human Resources, Dele Awolala.
This action follows the closing down of Jumia businesses in Cameroon and Tanzania as well as the lay off of some staff in Kenya.
Founded as Jovago in 2013, the hotels and flights marketplace became Jumia Travel after it rebranded in 2016.
The rebranding move according to a statement at that time was to connect its companies into Jumia’s ecosystem with a new vision, “Expand your horizons”. The new Jumia ecosystem will give access to products and services from its leading platforms.
Sacha Poignonnec and Jeremy Hodara, founders and co-CEOs of Jumia said: “We founded our companies with a very strong belief: the Internet can improve people’s lives in Africa. Uniting all services allows us to better help our customers fulfil their daily aspirations. This is all possible because people connect to our platform to access those services and products in an environment that we have designed for them, addressing their needs and expectations on quality, choice, price, trust, and convenience.”
The Alibaba of Africa appears to be desperately looking for ways to cut its losses and become profitable. One of the ways it thinks it can achieve this is to close down businesses that are not strategic to these objectives.
Jumia’s 3rd quarter report shows that it is nowhere near profitability despite making a revenue of $44.2 million. Regardless, the losses keep rising. For the Q3, the loss stood at $55 million, which is higher than the $45 million it recorded in the same quarter in 2018.
Jumia mall and Jumia Food will continue to operate in Nigeria for now.
With the shut down of Jumia Travel in Nigeria, Travelstart will now take over all operational businesses of Jumia travel in Nigeria.
Meanwhile, for the employees of Jumia Travel, they will be paid their severance packages.
