THE SINKING OF SABUNTA

It was not long ago that my sister, her friend (both alumni of Oxford University) and i were discussing the potential of on-line retailing in Nigeria around the dinner table. I was stating that with no real competitor in the market the gap is certainly there for someone to launch a site to cater to fashion conscious Nigerians, so my sister and i began brainstorming business ideas that we could bring to fruition. It was to my surprise (horror) that my sisters friend proclaimed that in fact there was a website that had recently been actualised for Nigeria selling both international brands as well as domestic fashion labels.

My sisters friend is from Germany and she is very familiar with the businesses of the Samwer brothers who also hail from Germany and are otherwise known as the copy cats of the tech world. Not content with conquering the European and South American tech markets the Samwer brothers, through their start-up incubator Rocket Internet, now wanted to conquer Nigeria!

The site was called Sabunta and looked very professional with HD pictures and a variety of brands to purchase from. They did minimal advertising but were managing to attract customers who gave favourable reviews.With unlimited money being pumped in from Rocket Internet  they were definitely going to retain their position as market leaders if anyone else dared to enter the fashion e-commerce realm. How was i therefore going to be able to compete against them if i launched my own site? And what did the Samwer brothers know about the Nigerian market? I scoffed at the concept of these brothers doing business as a non-Nigerian in Nigeria;how would that work without help from somebody based there?

Until research led me to somebody called Tunde Kehinde, co-founder of Rocket Internet Nigeria, MBA educated from Harvard Business School and co-founder of Bandeka.com, an online internet dating website for people from Africa. Great credentials. Hmmmmm....

So how amusing for me to read several months later that the Sabunta ship is sinking. Well to be fair it has already sunk. They have consolidated the Sabunta site and merged it with their other site Kasuwa to form Jumia. Same template website but sales are not just focused on fashion but also on electronics, games, beauty and errrm.... everything similar to what Amazon provides. Downsizing of operations staff has occurred whilst senior management jobs still retained. 

So now all eyes are on Jumia. This model should prove more profitable for them and i would be interested in hearing what the man behind Rocket Internet Nigeria , Tunde Kehinde, has to say about the new direction they are taking. What i do know is that any future failures would be a sign that perhaps either Rocket Internet are not cut out for the Nigerian e-commerce market or Nigeria is not yet ready for the e-commerce market. What do you think?

READ MORE (Techloy did a fab article on this)