Sim Shagaya

Simdul Shagaya is a Nigerian entrepreneur; the CEO and founder of Konga, one of Nigeria’s top e-commerce website.

Education

He was born in Nigeria but received most of his education in the United States. Sim Shagaya is a graduate of George Washington University, Dartmouth College and he holds an MBA from Havard Business School.

Career

Sim Shagaya returned to Africa in the early 2000s, and at that time Nigeria was still finding its feet in democracy, and Sim Shagaya opted to stay in South Africa; which was more stable at that time, he joined Rand Merchant Bank as the West African Principal. He has over 11 years’ experience in New Media and Investment Banking. He has worked with leaders such as MicroStrategy, Lucent Technologies and Real Networks. He served as the Africa lead for the search and internet advertising leader – Google Inc. He serves as a Director of E-Motion Advertising Limited. He is a member of the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria. Sim Shagaya launched e-Motion Advertising in November 2005, a Lagos-based integrated marketing and communications agency. In March 2011, he founded Dealdey, which grew to be one of Nigeria’s leading daily deals site.

Challenges

Sim Shagaya’s journey to success was not without several loopholes; he had failed attempts such as alarina.com- a dating site, jobclan.com- a job recruitment site, gbogbo.com- a classified site and a media streaming service -iNollywood.com. In an interview Sim Shagaya explained why his previous startups were not successful, he said: “The timing was wrong. These startups were just way ahead of their time.” The failure didn’t deter him, rather, the experiences and insights gained from these entrepreneurial endeavors eventually enabled Sim Shagaya to pioneer the online industry in Nigeria, particularly e-commerce retailing.

Konga

Konga.com was founded in 2012; it is a Nigerian electronic commerce company. Konga offers a third-party online market and a first-party direct retail spanning various categories including consumer electronics, fashion, home appliances, books, children’s items, and personal care products. Konga’s head office is in Yaba, Lagos. Sim Shagaya founded Konga with 20 staff which initially functioned as a Lagos only online retailer focused on merchandise in the Baby, Beauty, and Personal Care categories, but broadened its scope to all of Nigeria in December 2012 and gradually expanded merchandise categories through 2012 and 2013. According to Sim Shagaya, his primary goal with Konga was to aggregate the youngest and fastest-growing market that was dispersed, under-served and that traditional retailers were simply failing to reach. Konga has improved over the years and it is now one of the most visited online shopping sites in Nigeria.

Sim Shagaya was listed by Forbes as one of the 10 most powerful men in Africa in 2014, he has also won several awards such as the prestigious Entrepreneur of the Year 2013 Award in the CNBC/All Africa Business Leaders Award in West Africa. He is no thought a successful entrepreneur.

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