Jumia, far beyond retail marketing—CEO Jumia Travel

Paul Midy is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Jumia Travel, formally known as Juvago Travel. He was engaged in this interview with the Editor of Business247 News Online, Wole Tokede. Midy used the opportunity of the engagement to answer some specific questions on hospitality and tourism business as they concern his company and generic questions on the industry as a whole. Happy reading.

Jumia as a group, what does it stand for?

We have ten companies under Jumia brand. We have Jumia Market, Jumia Travel, Jumia Foods, Jumia Car, Jumia House, Jumia Deals ect. At Jumia Travel, we are passionate about travels and tourism business. These are separate companies under the big umbrella of Jumia. The challenge for us at Jumia Travel is to build maximum understanding about what is our service.

Sixty per cent of the hotels we work is through online platform. Our major target is managing our customers well, attending to their requests, ensuring they are happy.  Today, 80 per cent of our customers strongly recommend Jumia Travel. We can confidently say our customers are happy. We have great price, happy customers. The brand Juvago Travel which we were before was a good brand but it is not as good as Jumia. Everybody knows Jumia. So, if we rely on this brand with Jumia cover, it will help us to grow better and get seen more by the customers.

Of course it won’t do everything, we have to expand on Jumia brand, but relying on this brand will help us to be better known. Imagine, each time we do marketing it is under Jumia brand, each time Ello Food, now Jumia Food is doing marketing it is under Jumia brand it is the same thing in Nigeria, Kenya, Cote de Voire in Tanzania, everywhere we are in Africa. You can imagine the power that it brings to our group in terms of brand recognition.

Jovago has come a long way, well known in tourism and hospitality industry. Now, to be known as Jumia Travels and Jumia brand largely know in retail marketing, electronics etc and Jovago mainly for travels and tourism. Now Jovago has becomes Jumia Travel are you sure there would not be conflict?

Nobody knows. Brand awareness and recognition is not like mathematics where you do analysis and come out with 100 per cent assurance of what the result will be. With brands, we never knew. We have come to make people understood that Jumia is not only for retail marketing. It covers food business, buying houses, buying cars. It is everything with e-commerce. Whatever you want, you can get it through internet from Jumia. There cannot be confusion. People already know us for what we are. Changing the name from Juvago to Jumia will not bring any confusion; we rather believe the name Jumia will add to our acceptance and visibility. Because Jumia is a good brand with trustworthy reputation built over the years.

To add to that, you said you know Jumia as a retail marketer. This is so because that is the perception we created in the past two years and it came out that way because of our strategy. Jumia is an e-commerce group of company. Anything you can buy online, we are for it. That is what we are.

The economic recession in the country is biting very hard. How has it impacted your direct business in Jumia Travel?

The economy is bad, we all know it and of course it has impacts on our business like any other business. People have less money, less money to travel. People’s disposable income is no more there. But for us two things. First, when you build a group like Jumia, or a company under Jumia cover, you don’t think of what you are going to make as profit at the end of a year. You think of what you are going to make in the next ten years. That is you plan for long time, you engage in long-time strategies. We would prefer the economy to be much better, but we can still say despite all, we have supper confidence that the economy of Nigeria is still very strong and it is going to be better. Most of the people who were here last year when the economy was strong are still in Nigeria.

On the short-term it is difficult. What we need now is how to serve well our customers in this time when they have less money and they will still have to travel. They will still travel for businesses. One thing that is amazing at Jumia is that despite the 17 per cent inflation in Nigeria, the price of Jumia cover has not changed. There is no inflation on Jumia cover, even our prices this year is lower than last year because we have more deeds and more discount, of course, and more customers. We are in arrangement with hotel managers that we maintain low price. We could have said everybody is increasing price by 15 per cent, let us increase ours also, but no, we didn’t.

How has this affected your business?

Our focus is to have more customers and give them the best price. We know that when we lower the price of our hotels we know we lower our own commission which is the percentage we take. But, I prefer lowering our own commission and have more customers as against what some companies do by having expensive price and have small customers. That is the strategy of companies under Jumia, group. Make the prices lowest you can get, we concentrate on volume. What we do is the game of numbers. Yes, it is the game of number.

How does Jumia promote start-up in Nigeria?

Promoting start-up in Nigeria is very important for us.  Here we are not just want to do business, we want to impact the society.  Help hotels but we don’t call them star-ups. We help them in advice, on cuisine and all that. Every month we have meetings with them on how to grow their business. We do these and much more.