Jumia, an e-commerce startup, has announced that it has fired 900 workers as a result of a 20 percent reduction in its personnel.
In its Q4 2022 financial results released on Thursday, the business made this disclosure;
“We expect these headcount reductions to allow us to save over 30 percent in monthly staff costs starting from March 2023, as compared to the October 2022 staff cost baseline”.
The firm stated that the workforce reductions were completed in Q4 2022 and added that “the implementation of these organizational changes resulted in $3.7 million in one-off restructuring charges recognized in the fourth quarter of 2022.”
The e-commerce company additionally disclosed that it has reduced its organizational structure and established more efficient teams that were devoted to carrying out its plan.
“As part of that, we are working on optimizing the returns on our paid online marketing investments by rationalizing marketing channels.
“We are also allocating a higher share of investment to local offline channels that help us build brand awareness and consideration in a cost-effective manner.
“We are also working on a comprehensive plan to drive fulfillment cost efficiencies. This includes a number of actions such as optimizing our footprint and logistics routes, improving warehousing staff management and productivity, reducing packaging costs, and many more.
The company further stated thus, “We have seen early signs of success of this strategy in our e-commerce physical goods business where the freight & shipping cost per package decreased by 23 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2022″.
