Konga raised 35 million dollars in a year and was valued around 200 million. Then came cuts and a sale.
Founded in Lagos in 2012 with 20 staff, Konga became one of Nigeria’s best-known online retailers. After laying off over half its staff it was acquired by Zinox in 2018.
Konga was founded in July 2012 in Lagos, with a staff of 20. It started as a Lagos-only online retailer for baby, beauty and personal care products, then widened to all of Nigeria by December 2012.
A fast rise
In early 2013 it raised a 10 million dollar Series A from Kinnevik and Naspers, and later that year a 25 million dollar Series B, then the largest single round raised by an African startup. In 2014 it opened its platform to outside sellers as Konga Marketplace, which reached 8,000 merchants by the end of the year, eight times its internal target. Black Friday orders in 2014 were 3.5 million dollars, against 300,000 dollars the year before. After a Series C in October 2014, it was reportedly valued at about 200 million dollars. It launched KongaPay in 2015 to make online payments easier.
The turn
Konga then laid off over half its staff and, two months later, was acquired by the Nigerian computer maker Zinox. In May 2018 Zinox merged it with its retail business Yudala, keeping the Konga name.
What other online sellers can learn
- Demand spikes are not the same as steady demand. A record sales day proves interest, not profit.
- Delivery and payments carry much of the cost in online retail, which is why Konga built both.
- Funding rounds are not revenue. The public record here does not point to one single cause for the 2018 sale, and we do not claim one.