Konga Vs Jumia – Who Is Wining The E-Commerce War In Nigeria?

Amazon has made it clear, “you cannot ship any product but books and CD’s to Nigeria,” this was entirely frustrating for a lot of Nigerians who legitimately wanted to have “original” products brought down to Nigeria.

Amazon, like PayPal who recently, partly accepted Nigeria into its system can’t be blamed for such a decision. Nigeria’s reputation when it comes to online business has always been marred with stories of sophisticated fraud and Amazon wasn’t ready to be at the receiving end.

There were a few companies who tried to bridge the gap, but they lacked the machinery to serve in such capacity and ended up at the shores of failure, but the birth of Konga.com and Jumia in 2012 was the climax of e-commerce evolution in Nigeria.

The Early Days

In 2012, Jumia was launched by Jeremy Hodara and Sacha Poignonnec, which later received $35 million funding from Millicom for expansion purposes. The move also led to the acquisition of a 90,000 square foot warehouse in Lagos. That same year, Konga.com was launched in Nigeria by Sim Shagaya with only 10 workers. The e-commerce startup also became a recipient of funding from Investment AB Kinnevik in the sum of $15 million, and in October of 2013, Konga announced it was moving to a new 120,000 square foot fulfillment centre.

I have used both but was particularly disappointed in Konga’s distribution chain. I placed an order for an Xperia smartphone, only to be called 4-days later that the device was not available. What arrogance! What gross irresponsibility and pure insensitivity, I pondered. That was frustrating for me, because I had planned everything out as I was getting myself a birthday gift, but thanks to Konga, it was soiled.

It wasn’t too difficult for both companies to sell their brands throughout Nigeria, within few months of launch, Konga and Jumia were already household names – a result of big budget advertisement campaign.

On 29 November 2013, Konga specifically suffered server outage on its poor network infrastructure which was unable to handle the massive influx of customers who wanted to join the “Konga Black Friday promotions.” The company has since revamped it server capacity and continue to serve millions of Nigerians.

Distribution And Delivery

Konga and Jumia does this excellently, without these two companies fighting it hard, no one would have imagined that an almost flawless delivery and distribution network could be achieved in Nigeria.

Both companies know that the success of e-commerce lies on the strongholds of it delivery and distribution network chain. I guess they learned this from Amazon and it’s been pretty and neatly implemented in Nigeria.

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Basically, it takes both Jumia and Konga about 4-10 working days to deliver your products in any part of Nigeria. I have used both but was particularly disappointed in Konga’s distribution chain. I placed an order for an Xperia smartphone, only to be called 4-days later that the device was not available. What arrogance! What gross irresponsibility and pure insensitivity, I pondered. That was frustrating for me, because I had planned everything out as I was getting myself a birthday gift, but thanks to Konga, it was soiled.

I still use both, but mostly gear towards Konga, even after that shameful incidence, I have a couple of friends who prefer Jumia, and they have never had any reason to complain.

Shipping Charges

I do not know if the “free shipping” tag seen on Konga and Jumia are nothing but marketing gimmicks. Whatever it is, I guess it’s working for them, but for unsuspecting users, it isn’t. On Konga, it basically takes about N1,500 to have your goods shipped, while on Jumia, it’s quite on the high side. I have seen someone complain about paying as much as N3,000 to have his product delivered.

The monetary figure here; only represents products like mobile phones. If you are purchasing products that consumes space and has lot of weight, you certainly can’t expect the same kind of treatment. 🙂

Durability

There is a school of thought which suggests that products sold on Konga and Jumia are simply refurbished, while we don’t have anything to show that its valid, we can only take with a grain of salt. Although, we can’t completely rule out the possibility of such things happening, but we can’t be callous enough to accept a truth as fact.

Products sold on Konga and Jumia are authentic as far as we can tell. We have used their products, they are completely safe to use, majorly because of the warranty.

Most Nigerians take the issue of warranty carelessly, but this is the hallmark of e-commerce. It shows faith in the products being purchased, should problem arise within the time-frame covered under warranty, you are entitled to free repair or replacement. It is non-negotiable!

Pay On Delivery

This is arguably one of the best features on Konga and Jumia. Whoever thought this out, absolutely understands the mindset of Nigerians. This feature facilitated buyer’s trust and its equally one of the reasons while e-commerce have risen high in Nigeria. For me, I have never paid on the go for any product in any of the e-commerce stores, the pay on delivery makes a whole lot of sense, both companies really does the process flawlessly.

Customer Care

Both companies have been completely embarrassing in this aspect, and for us, this is the most important aspect of a business.

Response to ticket is ridiculously slow and on call, they both want to impose stuffs on you .. WTF! They don’t have that right, but a lot of bizarre things are celebrated in this country. Perhaps, this is peculiar to us alone, if you have had it better, we would be glad to hear that. 🙂

Affiliate Programs

Basically, I feel Konga has the edge when it comes to Affiliate marketing. Jumia has been slow, they don’t seem to have made up their mind on what platform powers their affiliate program.

However, they both provide fair commission per sale and there have equally been reports on someone who makes a million naira from Konga affiliate program monthly.

Over To You

E-commerce has come a very long way in Nigeria, all within a very short period of time. Both Konga and Jumia has become a benchmark for anyone entry into the industry. Competition is never too much as it is the bed-rock of quality service delivery.

So, we won’t try to pitch one of the e-commerce sites above the other. Konga and Jumia are the two best e-commerce companies in Nigeria and they both have their bragging rights.

What’s your thoughts?

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