A colleague visiting China sent me a video of a live dashboard at one of Alibaba’s facilities that was tracking sales during the Singles’ Day shopping frenzy this year, and my jaw dropped at the sheer scale and speed at which purchases were happening.
At the close of it all, $25.3 billion in discount sales had been processed, shadowing the famous Black Friday that kick starts the festive season spending madness in the US.
When Jack Ma came to Kenya, the one message he had on repeat was the fact that the world is open for business with the Internet at the centre of it all, connecting demand and supply while facilitating payment.
From the fireside chats to the keynote he gave at the University of Nairobi, the feeling that I got was that his sights and those of the various companies under his watch were on Africa.
His counterparts in construction have cemented themselves firmly in physical infrastructure.
Others such as Huawei, a networking and telecommunications company have been slowly but surely claimed market share in the enterprise and consumer verticals.
Jumia Group, with its unicorn status, is one of the more visible online commerce players in Africa. Last week, when I spoke of the myth of the first mover advantage, I looked at Jumia as the market prepper, educating consumers and readying the market for those coming next.
While the unit economics may not feel right at the moment, I dare temper that opinion with the fact that one of its investors, Rocket Internet, is best known for their build to flip model.
Alibaba Group specialises in and owns digital infrastructure and properties. With an early November market cap of US$ 486.27 billion and proud standing as the sixth-largest Internet company by revenue, they just might have the appetite for the sort of risk and capital sink that is Jumia, which has taken a total of 425 million euros across four funding rounds with books still in the red and break even projected for 2019.
Cainiao would take a swipe at logistics; AliBaba Cloud would power scalable systems; AliPay would reduce transaction friction; and Ant Financial would seal the deal with a credit financing hook. Perchance?
PAYE Tax Calculator
Note: The results are not exact but very close to the actual.
