Encomium
Two foremost online retailers, Jumia and Konga are at the moment at loggerheads over accusation coming from the latter that the former wants to stifle it out of business. Konga.com is said to be threatening Jumia with court action for infringing on their trade name.
Jumia, owned by Rocket Internet from Belgium, began operations in 2012, a month after Konga followed suit by kicking off their own operations. The problem now is that Rocket Internet registered about 10 domain names that sharply resembles it’s competitors brand name, Konga outside Nigeria, a move described by Konga management as to limit their operations within Nigeria only. It was revealed that about 10 Konga names had been registered in some African countries, a development that has really affected Konga Nigeria business.
That was the situation of things a week ago.
We, however, reached out to Ifeanyi Abraham, Public Relations Strategist at Konga and Afam Anyika of Jumia for an elaborate comment on the situation of things, our text messages to the two were not replied before going to press.
Ifeanyi Abraham had described the development as destructive competition, “Rocket Internet has proceeded to buy and sit on the domain names of Konga across Africa, this is destructive and will stifle the growth of Nigerian business. We have reported the case and no action to that effect, we are going ahead with legal action”.
Afam Anyika of Jumia had reportedly claimed the company is not interested in those allegations “We are constantly focused on the customers and our operations. We have had such complaints in the past, we chose to ignore them. We don’t want to be distracted”.
Registering of a domain name which is identical to a trade mark abroad, especially in Italy is described as infringing on unfair competition rules and trade mark.
Both retailers, according to current statistics, attract over 100,000 daily visitors to their domains. Konga.com is founded by Sim Shagaya.
