Is there something they are not telling us?
You may not have noticed but BrighterMonday has a new CEO. According to his LinkedIn profile, Emmanuel Mutuma started his new role as CEO just this month, replacing Eva Slootweg who was hired as the CEO exactly a year ago in September.
One Africa Media (parent company to BrighterMonday and Jobberman) is undergoing a restructuring process to increase capacity for larger operations. In the same vein, lots of promotions are taking place as OAM integrates additional assets and personnel. The ex-CEO of Brighter Monday, Eva has become the Chief Human Resource Officer (CHRO) and Opeyemi Awoyemi (co-founder of Jobberman) is now the Head of Jobs.
This particular shuffle in management is interesting to us because we learned of it via an anonymous tip that suggests that much bigger things are going on at Brighter Monday and OAM as a whole. BrighterMonday is Kenya’s largest online job market (just like Jobberman is in Nigeria) and just last week, they launched a Messenger chat bot to help users receive information quicker and easier. This proactive move is supposed to help them stay ahead of the curve, but the fact is, the parent company, OAM has run into a few bumps this year.
In August, SEEK Limited released their 2016 yearly report where they revealed they had made their third investment into OAM. The report also goes on to state that SEEK is experiencing a decrease in valuation but an increase in goodwill (as evidenced by their increased investments of an additional $5 million in OAM in 2015 and $2 million in 2016). It’s possible this increase in goodwill is as a result of OAM’s brand growing stronger in Africa, due to its acquisition of successful startups like Jobberman and BrighterMonday.
However, OAM’s investment in Jobberman can be seen as volatile due to the fact that while investments were made in Dollars, revenue is in Naira and the Nigerian Naira is currently undergoing a freefall. This may be one of the reasons why OAM has been making an operating loss between last year and now. It’s expected that OAM’s partnership with media giant, Ringier this year might insulate OAM from more loss.
This is a developing story and we’re currently finding out as much as we can.
