Worldview: Africa’s E-Commerce Giants Hit Turbulence

🇰🇪 Kenyan e-commerce company Copia goes into administration. Copia World, the guardian firm of the mass market e-tailer that raised $123 million in enterprise funding, has appointed KPMG to handle the administration course of, placing it prone to shutting down. Citing “uncertainties forward”, firm CEO Tim Metal wrote in an inner memo seen by TechCabal that “it is extremely seemingly that there can be a discount in our workforce, and it’s doable that the cost of salaries might be in danger.” Layoffs on the e-tailer promoting every thing from style and wonder merchandise to meals and electronics might have an effect on over 1,000 staff. Competitor corporations on the African continent have additionally been struggling. At Jumia, the plan to rescue the Nigeria-founded pan-African e-commerce big has resulted in improved gross sales however the firm nonetheless reported a loss within the newest quarter. [TechCabal, TechCrunch]

🇿🇦 Parent of South African e-tailer Takealot taps new CEO. Cape City-based Naspers and its Amsterdam-listed worldwide funding arm Prosus have named Fabricio Bloisi as chief government of the Prosus and Naspers Group, beginning in July. The Brazilian entrepreneur, founding father of Prosus-owned Brazil-based Movile and former CEO of Latin American meals supply firm iFood, replaces the group’s interim chief government Ervin Tu, who served after final 12 months’s departure of Bob van Dijk. Prosus has a portfolio of round 80 belongings throughout 100 markets and is the most important single investor in Tencent, the Chinese language group behind super-app WeChat. Web big Naspers owns South African firms together with multi-category e-commerce big Takealot, style e-tailer Superbalist, PayU and Media24. [BoF Inbox, Financial Times, Reuters]

🇮🇳 Global prices of Indian lab-grown diamonds plummet 45%. Overproduction has contributed to the crash seen within the 2024 monetary 12 months. Although exports additionally declined as lately as April, demand has been rising domestically as gold costs elevated. “Any additional decline in [lab-grown diamond] costs will result in extreme losses for…producers and won’t be sustainable,” mentioned Pooja Sheth Madhavan, managing director of Limelight Diamonds, a sequence with 50 shops throughout India. [Economic Times]

🇨🇳 China’s garment and textile exports rise slightly in the Jan-Apr period. The nation’s exports of textiles, clothes and equipment rose 0.57 p.c to $89.836 billion within the first 4 months of 2024. Garment exports remained flat and textile exports rose 1.2 p.c. [Fibre2Fashion]

🇯🇵 Rakuten partners with eBay to sell used Japanese fashion in the US. The Japanese e-commerce big and the US market began the tie-up on Might 8 by trialling a number of distributors on Rakuten’s second-hand items unit Rakuma, aiming to capitalise on the impact of the yen’s close to 34-year low in opposition to the greenback and international cost-of-living pressures. “To say one thing is ‘utilized in Japan’ offers some instant worth [elsewhere because]…second-hand items [from Japan are generally] in fairly fine condition,” mentioned Rakuma basic supervisor Kenichiro Hasegawa. [Reuters]

🇨🇳 Chinese app Kuaishou sees quarterly e-commerce GMV surge 28%. The Beijing-based, Hong Kong-listed quick video and livestreaming platform mentioned annual gross merchandise worth development for Q1 2024 amounted to 288.1 billion yuan ($40.33 billion). The variety of month-to-month energetic e-commerce consumers throughout the interval elevated by 22.4 p.c to 126 million. Whereas rivals Douyin and Xiaohongshu are the main target for a lot of worldwide manufacturers’ advertising and marketing and gross sales efforts, Kuaishou stays well-liked in cities which might be tier-two and under. [Jing Daily, BoF]

🇮🇳 Indian parent company of Indya and FabAlley raises $6 million. Excessive Avenue Necessities, the agency behind the 2 womenswear manufacturers, has raised 50 crore rupees ($6 million) in fairness and debt infusion in a funding spherical led by Sangita Jindal, chairperson of JSW Basis, with participation from SRF Group, Krishna Bodanapu of Cyient Applied sciences and Timmy Sarna from Pure Residence Dwelling. The capital can be used to assist Indya, which has collaborations with native designers comparable to Rohit Gandhi & Rahul Khanna and Varun Bahl, develop additional into the premium event and wedding ceremony put on market. [Economic Times]

🇨🇳 Dazed Media partners with Huasheng Media to launch Another Man China. The Chinese language version of the brand new month-to-month will function each regionally produced content material and content material from the UK version. Huasheng, which is the companion for the Chinese language editions of T: The New York Occasions Type Journal, Nylon, and Wallpaper, has appointed firm founder and CEO Feng Chuxuan as group editor of One other Man China with Tian Zhiwei (Nate Tian) as editorial director and Zhou Xiangyu (Xander Zhou) as style director. The China market licence of namesake Dazed journal was beforehand held by Yoho nevertheless it ceased publishing throughout the pandemic. [BoF Inbox]

🇮🇳 Parent of Indian beauty brand Mamaearth acquires Cosmogenesis Labs. Honasa Client is shopping for the Maharashtra-based analysis and growth firm specialising in pure and natural cosmetics, for an undisclosed quantity. “As a part of the transaction, we may also be buying a bunch of the formulation experience, R&D labs in addition to a nano manufacturing facility,” mentioned Honasa Client co-founder and CEO Varun Alagh, addint that Cosmogenesis founder Rohini Manoj will develop into vice chairman of R&D for the agency. Along with Mamaearth, Gurugram-based Honasa at the moment operates manufacturers The Derma Co, Bblunt, Ayuga, Aqualogica, Dr Sheth’s and Staze. [Economic Times]

🇪🇬 Egyptian suppliers to global perfume companies linked to child labour. Jasmine flowers picked by kids have been utilized by fragrance suppliers utilized by L’Oréal and Estée Lauder manufacturers, based on a BBC investigation that adopted households in Egypt in 2023 selecting jasmine for native factories. These factories extract jasmine oil from the flowers and provide it to worldwide perfume homes comparable to Givaudan and Firmenich, which magnificence conglomerates to supply their scents. Kids as younger as 5 work selecting flowers all through the night time, and earn on common as little as $1 a day. [BoF]

🇮🇳 India’s Jaipur Watch Company raises more capital. The Rajasthan-based luxurious watch model named after the state capital has secured 2.4 crore rupees ($289,000) in funding from buyers Nirav Jogani of Lemon Funds, Jignesh Shah of Dev Diamonds and Fortunate Jewelry to develop advertising and marketing initiatives and its retail footprint past the present community of 5 shops and three new ones deliberate for this 12 months. Founder Gaurav Mehta mentioned the corporate raised 3.5 crore rupees up to now and is in talks to lift a bigger spherical of 5.5 – 6 crore. [Economic Times]

🇨🇳 Chinese fragrance brand Documents shutters another store. The corporate has confirmed that its first mono-brand retailer on Center Huaihai Highway in Shanghai has closed, following the December closure of the Chengdu IFS department. Based in 2021 by Meng Zhaoran, Paperwork has in recent times secured funding from Ushopal Group, Shanghai Meicifang Funding (L’Oréal’s funding arm in China) and Cathay Client Co-creation Fund (co-established by Cathay Capital, Kering, L’Oréal and Pernod Ricard). [Jing Daily, BoF]

🇮🇳 Indian jeweller Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri posts 7.5% profit rise in Q4. The Mumbai-based chain of gold and diamond jewelry based in 1864 with over 30 shops nationwide has reported consolidated web revenue of 126.1 million rupees ($1.5 million) for the quarter ended. March 31, up from 117.3 million rupees a 12 months earlier. [Economic Times]

🌏 Taiwanese luxury resale firm PopChill secures $1.3 million investment. The extra capital brings the entire funds raised within the Pre-A+ funding spherical to $3.1 million. The brand new buyers becoming a member of this spherical, Prime Taiwan Enterprise Capital and the Taiwan Nationwide Improvement Fund, be a part of earlier members together with 500 World, Acorn Pacific, ITIC, AVA Angels Fund, Acorn Pacific Ventures, and Darwin Ventures. PopChill co-founder Andy Kuo mentioned that the corporate will use the funding to additional development in Hong Kong and enter Singapore. [BoF Inbox, Retail In Asia]

🇮🇳 Indian footwear retail giant Metro Brands sees profits more than double. The corporate has reported a 126.3 p.c enhance in year-on-year web revenue to 155.57 crore rupees ($18.7 million) for the fourth quarter of 2024. The Delhi-based firm based in 1955 now working over 830 shops nationwide sells inhouse manufacturers like Metro Sneakers, Mochi and Walkway in addition to companion manufacturers comparable to Vans, Crocs, Fila and Fitflop. [Economic Times]

🇰🇪 Kenya’s Vivo enters the US market with Atlanta store. The Nairobi-based style model’s retailer was unveiled final week. Guardian firm Vivo Style Group was based by Wandia Gichuru and Anne Marie Burugu in 2011 and at the moment has 26 shops in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda with over 360 staff promoting its namesake model, Safari, Zoya and others. Final 12 months, Gichuru raised $1 million for ShopZetu, a multi-brand e-commerce platform she co-founded. [Semafor, BoF]

🇮🇳 Prathyusha Agarwal to head Indian e-tailer Flipkart’s Shopsy. The previous chief enterprise officer of edtech agency Byju has been named vice chairman and head of Shopsy, a platform launched as a social commerce app by Walmart-owned Flipkart in 2021 earlier than turning into a low-priced ecommerce rival to Meesho and Amazon Bazaar. [Economic Times]

🇨🇳 Versace taps Chinese singer Cai Xukun as brand ambassador. The Italian luxurious model has partnered with the celeb, a former face for Prada, Tag Hauer and De Beers in China. With over 38 million followers on Weibo alone, Cai has remained well-liked with some followers regardless of a scandal which noticed him accused of forcing a former sexual companion of getting an abortion, a declare he has denied. [BoF Inbox]

🇮🇩 Indonesia anti-trust agency probes Singapore’s Shopee and Lazada. Native authorities are investigating the Indonesian items of two Singapore-based regional e-commerce giants: Sea Ltd-owned Shopee and Alibaba-owned Lazada, over alleged competitors rule breaches. The corporations compete with native e-tailers available in the market comparable to GoTo Group’s Tokopedia and Bukalapak. [The Straits Times]

🇨🇳 Victoria’s Secret names Chinese actress Tian Xiwei as ambassador. The American lingerie model has partnered with the star of TV sequence like “Romance on the Farm” and “New Life Begins” to endorse its merchandise. [Jing Daily]