Our Radar AMA with Olamide Bada, Jumia Food Nigeria’s Managing Director, is tomorrow. We’re pretty excited to have her around and we thought to share this…excitement.
As with previous AMA guests, we asked Olamide some informal questions so we could get to know her a little bit before the D-day. No. 2 tells me she’s good at damage control.
1. If you weren’t doing this – your job, what would you be doing?
Can I be open and honest with you guys? If so, then I would be a dancer travelling across the world with the likes of Beyoncé, Chris Brown and Usher. Yes, that’s right. Don’t @ me.
However because my mother is a traditional Nigerian woman and “my daughter is a dancer” would never suffice, I would most likely be a journalist/writer. Reason being I admire people and storytelling.
2. What’s the biggest blunder you’ve ever committed in the course of your career?
I used to be at the bottom of the Corporate Law ladder, so I was somewhat insulated from doing too much damage (at least of the kind that would surface to our FTSE 100 clients).
It wasn’t until I started my current role that I was expected to have it all together, and as such, had the opportunity to commit a big blunder. So as you may know, HelloFood rebranded to become Jumia Food in June 2016, which also happened to be my first month on the job. As a project manager-extraordinaire, I prided myself on being able to put together a detailed plan and manage several moving parts through to execution.
It’s just a shame that my attention to detail didn’t kick in until after we had printed out 50 new shirts for our riders with the wrong Jumia Food URL on the back. I noticed the day after we went live with the new brand name, but I was luckily able to beg the online marketing team to redirect the wrong URL – which was now printed on our rider shirts and had been deployed across Lagos and Abuja – to the correct one by the close of business that day.
I was planning to take this one to the grave, but well, crisis averted!
3. What’s one thing people misunderstand about you?
That I’m a man – that’s if they see the name, Olamide Bada, in written form (cue the Olamide Baddo jokes). And once they realise that I’m a woman, their change in tone is always very interesting.
4. What do you think about pineapples on pizza?
I personally try not to deviate from margherita, but it really isn’t the end of the world. If you bring me pineapple pizza, I will still eat it.
5. What apps are on your home screen?
Had to tidy it up a bit. Shout out to the Jumia Food app in the bottom right corner, because I absolutely do not have time to cook!
All questions are welcome tomorrow – both the serious and not-so-serious. Wanna know just how well Jumia Food is faring in Nigeria? What things Olamide has learnt during her time in the Nigerian startup ecosystem? If she will ever pursue her dream of being a dancer? What books are on Olamide’s Kindle? How she copes with unread notifications on her home screen? You can ask Olamide all that at the AMA. Join us tomorrow at 2pm (GMT +1) on Radar!
