How one man wrote the early playbooks for Jumia and Konga

Chikodi Ukaiwe first thought Jumia was a scam. Then he helped build it.

The glossy table shimmered under the office lights, reflecting the stern face of the Head of IT.

Seated across the table was Chikodi Ukaiwe, recently returned from the UK with a master’s degree, impeccably dressed in a sharp suit and prepared to resume work with his former employer.

He handed over his CV, a testament to years of study and ambition.

The manager took the CV, gave it a quick glance, and with a flick of his wrist, slid it across the table. But the surface was too smooth, too polished, and the paper, instead of stopping neatly, glided off the edge and onto the floor.

They didn’t need to exchange words. The message was clear. Chikodi wasn’t wanted at the bank.

To many, it would have felt like a moment of humiliation — a public slight, the dismissal of years of effort. For Chikodi Ukaiwe, it marked something different: a declaration of war, not on the man himself, but on the rigid, slow-moving system he embodied.

“At that moment,” Chikodi says in our interview, “I said, I’m going to disrupt all of this. I am not going to work in the biggest institution. I am going to disrupt everything.”

And disrupt, he did.

This isn’t just a story about rejection. It’s the origin story of Nigerian e-commerce, told through the eyes of one of its founding architects. A young man, once more obsessed with “girls and PlayStation” than grades, would go on to channel his anger into building two of Africa’s most iconic eCommerce brands, Jumia and Konga.

Today, with Salad Africa, he’s rewriting that story once more, this time for small businesses, the true backbone of the economy.

But let’s rewind a bit, because Chikodi’s journey isn’t linear.

An unlikely tech pioneer

Before the suits, before the startups, Chikodi was, by his own admission, “by far the most troublesome one” in his family. An only boy amidst two older sisters, his university days in 2002 were less about academic rigour and more about, well, the aforementioned girls and PlayStation. He confessed he didn’t even know what a “GPA” was until his second semester.

Yet, even then, the seeds of an entrepreneur were being sown. From selling powdered juices to his neighbours as a child to flipping second-hand phones in computer village while in secondary school, Chikodi possessed an innate understanding of commerce and margins. His family, a blend of Igbo and Yoruba, even joked he had the “perfect mixture for business.”

He didn’t choose Computer Science; his mother did. She, an academic with a sense for the future, steered him toward tech at a time when everyone else chased banking and Oil & Gas.

“It’s a testament to listening to your parents,” Chikodi jokingly says. Even if back then, he thought chemical engineering sounded cooler.

That choice, accidental as it seemed then, would define everything that came after.

His own version of the birth of Jumia

After a frustrating post-university year trying, and failing, to get a UK visa (he was denied five to six times!), Chikodi finally turned his attention to Nigeria. He endured a brief, unsatisfying stint in banking – a world of suits, rigid hours, and a corporate culture that stifled his entrepreneurial spirit. It’s no wonder that a few years later, armed with a Master’s, he’d find himself in that fateful bank office, his CV sliding across the floor.

But as one door slammed (literally), another, far stranger, opened. His girlfriend referred him to “meet some people” for a job interview.

He arrived at an unmarked building in Lekki, wearing his best bank-approved suit.

But his first sight, a lady walking around in shorts at 2 PM, got him rethinking his decision to show up for this interview.

“I thought this was definitely a scam,” he says, describing his initial impression of what would become Jumia. The “founders” — two young men in shorts — seemed too distracted, too informal. Yet, the energy was palpable.

Chikodi joined what was then a merger of small online fashion and phone companies, tasked with leading “partnerships” – a vague role that essentially meant convincing big corporations to take this wild e-commerce idea seriously.

This was 2012, remember. Trust in online transactions was nonexistent. People were still “grappling their heads around the concept of getting a card and trusting the machine within the bank premises, talking to us about taking that card and putting the details online.”

The solution? The legendary J-Force. Chikodi pioneered this army of young people equipped with devices, canvassing communities, explaining e-commerce, and even helping customers place orders. This hands-on approach directly tackled the “trust deficit” and, astonishingly, generated 60% of Jumia’s early Gross Merchandise Value (GMV). Chikodi was in the trenches, building an empire, one sceptical customer at a time.

Jumia vs Konga

As Jumia exploded, another giant was rising: Konga. The rivalry was fierce.

Then came the call. Sim Shagaya, Konga’s founder, wanted to meet. Chikodi vividly recounts the clandestine arrangements: sneaking into Konga’s office through a back elevator, blinds drawn in Sim’s office so no one at Jumia would know he was there. It was like a scene out of a spy movie.

Sim’s pitch wasn’t just about selling; it was about ecosystem building. Payments, logistics, SME empowerment – a vision that resonated deeply with Chikodi’s childhood dream of sustainability and making a real economic impact. Despite Jumia’s efforts to retain him, the vision for an integrated ecosystem at Konga was irresistible. Chikodi made the jump, joining Konga as Vice President in 2014.

At Konga, Chikodi was unleashed. He built the marketplace from scratch, acquiring thousands of merchants from bustling hubs like Alaba and Trade Fair. He helped them set up emails, take product photos, and process orders. He tackled the delivery challenge and, crucially, developed the B2B e-commerce infrastructure, enabling bulk deliveries for giants like Unilever and Guinness – orders worth hundreds of millions of Naira.

At Konga, he got a rare opportunity: the freedom to build and experiment inside a company that had the means to support big ideas. It was a masterclass in internal entrepreneurship — one that would prove invaluable in the years to come.

Over the course of almost two hours, Chikodi shared his story and hard-won truths on business, family (he’s a dad of 3 girls) and rest.

For a high-charging executive who once lived on 16-hour days, now champions scheduled rest as a necessity, not a luxury.

“A startup founder is just like an athlete,” he emphasises. “It is in everybody’s interest that that person is well (mentally, emotionally, physically).”

In the full interview, Chikodi shares more candid insights, hilarious anecdotes, and actionable wisdom for every aspiring entrepreneur.