It’s official – Jumia’s Tunde Kehinde and Raphael Afaedor are out. In their place are new co-CEOs Nicolas Martins and Jeremy Doutte. This is according to a release from Jumia PR.
The official announcement from Jumia ends months of speculation about the startup’s leadership. In December 2013, TechCabal reported that Tunde and Raphael’s exit from the startup was imminent and that both were on the verge of launching venture-backed startups in early 2014.
In another development, we learnt that one Dr. Jonathan Doerr had listed themselves as managing director and co-founder of the two year old ecommerce startup.
Nicolas Martins’ LinkedIn listing puts his time already served at Jumia at six months. He was there when I paid a visit to their Ikeja warehouse. That was in October 2013, so the transition must have been underway even back then. Jeremy Doutte is much newer, coming from Jumia’s Egypt offices to Nigeria just this January.
What’s next for our erstwhile Jumia CEOs? Both of them have been informally linked to new startups that intend to play in the ecommerce logistics arena. Of the two, Tunde Kehinde is clearly more aggressive. His updated LinkedIn puts him as CEO of some “NewCo” (Silicon Valley speak for a new startup in stealth), which if sources familiar with the matter are accurate, is actually something called A-Post. Not sure what that is yet, and Tunde is notoriously elusive, but all will become apparent by and by.
Raphael’s LinkedIn on the other hand gives us no clue about what he is doing next or if he indeed he’s got something planned (we know he does). He is still listed as Co-Founder and MD at Jumia. I expect that will change soon enough.
Post image credit: Busayo Longe
