Jumia Nigeria has appointed former Jumia Ghana CEO, Sunil Natraj, to head the e-commerce business.

Massimiliano Spalazzi, CEO of prominent e-commerce business Jumia Nigeria will be stepping down in December 2023 after working with Jumia Group for 11 years. Spalazzi, one of Jumia’s pioneer employees, will be replaced by Sunil Natraj,  Jumia Ghana’s CEO, who was appointed last year. Natraj will start in his new role in January 2024.

Natraj’s appointment was announced by Francis Dufay, the CEO of Jumia Group, at a media parley that was held today in Yaba, Lagos, Nigeria. 

“Jumia wants to be a Nigerian company and not a Lagos company. We want to continue what Spalazzi started,”  Natraj said at the event. 

He shared that  Jumia plans to expand to more Nigerian cities. 

Akure and Ilorin are two cities Jumia is considering. The e-commerce firm is also eyeing cities on the way to Ibadan, Warri and Benin in the first quarter of 2024. 

The broad plan is  to build a network that will cover the country in entirety. 

“We are targeting cities with a population of more than 20,000 people,” Dufay said. He explained that expanding in this manner has worked for a few countries in Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal. For him, Nigeria is Jumia’s biggest market. The CEO said the company has had its own fair share of challenges. Part of those challenges involved the reduction of its workforce in the fourth quarter of 2022, and cutting its advertising budgets by 73% in Q3 2023. The group also moved away from a focus on delivering low-ticket items.