Jumia, the online platform offering services in shopping, travel, food delivery, real estate sales, car rentals, Jobs etc, and M-Kopa, a pay-as-you-go solar power company, have been named among the 50 smartest companies in 2017 by MIT.
This makes the two startups the only companies from Africa to feature on the list. M-Kopa and Jumia came in at 34 and 44 respectively.
Though, this is not the first time an African startup is making it on the list. Jumia, then Africa Internet Group made it to last year's. At a position of 44 this year, Jumia has moved up 3 places on the list given that it was at 47 last year. Just a place below Snapchat.
At 34, M-Kopa beat Alibaba, Adidas, IBM, and Flipkart as some of the notable giants on the list. And for Jumia, at 44, it beat Daimler (holding company for Mercedes-Benz) and Snap (Parent company for snapchat) as well as CRM software giant Salesforce.
Headquartered in Nairobi, M-Kopa Solar, offers the largest off-grid solar operator in sub-Saharan Africa. It operates in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania and offers clean power to the consumer for a daily fee.
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M-Kopa has so far connected over 500,000 homes. In order to sell its products, M-Kopa has partnered with the major communications company Safaricom.
Formerly called Africa Internet Group, Jumia - last year - became the African continent’s first “unicorn” startup with an estimated valuation of over $1 billion after a $327 million funding round that included Goldman Sachs among its investors.
It is now operating all its consumer Web services under the Jumia name. These include shopping (Jumia Market), travel (Jumia Travel), food delivery (Jumia Food), real estate (Jumia House), cars (Jumia Car), Jobs (Jumia Jobs).
The company is working to overcome the challenges of e-commerce in the region. Some of which are clogged roadways, skeptical consumers, lack of Internet penetration in some market. With this, it hopes to unlock the spending potential of an expanding middle class.
Jumia is launching programs like a network of commissioned sales agents it calls J-Force. These can place orders for clients who have limited online access or are not comfortable ordering themselves.
The top five by order of rank were Nvidia, SpaceX, Amazon, 23andMe and lastly Google's parent company Alphabet.
Disclosure: The writer also works with Jumia Group