“Effective from May 1st, Yudala will now operate under the name KONGA, with dual CEOs in the persons of Nick Imudia who will be in charge of online among others and Prince Nnamdi Ekeh who will be responsible for offline.” Nairametrics.
According to that Nairametrics article, Konga and Yudala have been merged into a single entity effective May 1 and will operate with dual CEOs. Mr. Imudia will lead “online” and Prince Ekeh will lead “offline”.
I understand why Konga might prefer the dual-CEO structure. Prince Ekeh built Yudala and established offline coverage that remains critical in Nigeria. Surely it must be difficult to envision a scenario in the merged company where he is not in charge or running a significant portion of the business.
On the other hand, the opportunity to generate more value by combining Konga’s online brand and know-how with Yudala’s offline coverage was one of the biggest reasons for this merger. I believe those synergies will be best realized if both entities are fully integrated into one company and with one person responsible for setting and executing strategy. The company needs to have one set of objectives and integrated systems, and I think having two CEOs for “online” and “offline” makes this less likely to work smoothly.
For clarity, I am not saying the dual-CEO structure will fail. Many companies have pulled it off successfully and Mr. Imudia and Prince Ekeh may be able to. I am a big fan of business and e-commerce in Nigeria, and I hope they can make this work.
Cheers, to Konga!
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