The problem
A Nigerian shopper with money to spend could not trust what was online: fake phones, parcels that never arrived, and sellers who only took cash. The country had no local equivalent of a reliable mall with its own delivery fleet and its own way to pay.
How it works
Konga sells directly and through third-party sellers on Konga.com and in physical stores. Orders move on KOS-Express, its in-house logistics arm, and checkout runs through KongaPay, its integrated mobile-money channel with over 100,000 subscribers at the time of the Zinox acquisition. After Zinox bought Konga in February 2018, the business combined with Yudala’s offline retail network into an omnichannel operation spanning online, stores, payments, and delivery.
Pain points
Fakes from unverified sellers, third-party courier failures, and a cash-on-delivery habit that made refunds and scale painful for both buyers and merchants.
Business model
Margin on goods it retails itself, commissions from marketplace sellers, and fees from logistics and KongaPay payments — later stretched into adjacent verticals such as travel bookings and health distribution.
Challenges
Konga raised $108M from Naspers and Kinnevik and spent it duelling Jumia in a subsidy war it could not sustain: mass layoffs followed, and the 2018 Zinox takeover was widely read as a distressed sale. Even stabilised, it faces thin retail margins, expensive last-mile delivery, and a deep-pocketed rival.
Funding
- Raised: $108M in known pre-acquisition funding in rounds from Naspers and Kinnevik (TechCrunch, Mar 2018).
- Acquired: Zinox Group concluded the acquisition in February 2018 in a Securities and Exchange Commission-approved deal taking over Konga.com, KOS-Express, and KongaPay (Proshare/THISDAY, Feb 2018). Deal price was not disclosed in the inspected sources.
- Valuation: MISSING.
Latest — September 2026
On 27 September 2026 Konga unveiled a Defence Discount Scheme with the Defence Headquarters in Abuja: serving and retired Armed Forces personnel and their families get exclusive discounts on Konga’s platform across FMCG, smartphones, computing, appliances, automobiles, food, and renewable energy products, going live on 1 October 2026.