Originally posted on SureGroup.

We’re happy to announce Omolara Awoyemi as the new Managing Director of SureGroup. In the last 4 years, we’ve grown from experimenting to building Africa’s premier digital gift voucher company, growing beyond Nigeria to Kenya and setting up tentacles in Europe and other continents. As we grow, it has become imperative that we put in world-class structure and competencies that can scale across new target markets.

This is where Omolara comes in. Before Rocket Internet’s Sabunta.com and Kasuwa.com merged into Jumia in 2012, Omolara was a vital part of Sabunta, working on Business Intelligence, while Adeoye, Babafemi and I worked in similar roles across different departments on the Kasuwa team. Since then, she’s spent the last 6 years building and leading in various capacities across Jumia. She played a critical role in helping to build Jumia from startup to scale, and upon her exit, she’d led JumiaPay as the Country Manager for a year.

Under Omolara’s leadership at JumiaPay, she was able to integrate with all leading banks in Nigeria for customers to securely pay for goods and services using SMS technology. She achieved 400% growth in user base from the first month of launch till July 2018, taking JumiaPay to account for about 30% of Jumia’s entire transactions in Nigeria. She also built a lending platform for merchants to securely obtain loans to boost their business on Jumia. We’re excited about leveraging her deep expertise in e-commerce, financial services, and payment to expand SureGifts (digital gifting and rewards), SureCredit (voucher lending for regular income-earners) and SureRemit (low-cost cross-border value transfers).

My objective is to relentlessly grow our brand to be the biggest non-cash value transfer platform in Nigeria and Africa at large. Our platform will aggregate local and international merchants and give them exposure to the daily individual and business customers who send gifts and value to their friends, family and loved ones globally in a simple, safe, fast and convenient manner. This innovation will improve personal connections for individuals, drive employee performance for corporate organizations and consumer engagement for merchants. I believe we are still scratching the surface of the endless opportunities that lay ahead.

— Omolara

We have worked with Omolara as a colleague, client, and customer, and we are confident that she will drive the vision of the Group and take us to the next level. This is one of many major steps we’re taking this year, and we will be sharing more of it with you in the coming months.