Bumpa, a Nigerian e-Commerce Startup Raises $4 million to Support Marginalized SMEs

Bumpa, a Nigerian e-commerce startup, has announced a $4 million raise in its recently concluded seed funding round.

Plug & Play Ventures Commerce Fund, SHL Capital, Jedar Capital, Magic Fund, DFS Labs, FirstCheck Africa Angel Program, E62 Ventures, Club14, and Fast Forward Ventures also participated. Base10 Partners served as the round’s lead investor.

Bumpa has attracted the eye of investors and partners with its bold decision to support business growth for one million SMEs across Africa for its next growth phase at a time when venture investment in Africa has been steadily declining.

Regarding investing in Bumpa at this point in the VC market, Luci Fonesca, Principal at Base 10 Partners, who oversaw this round of financing, said the following: According to Luci Fonseca, Principal at Base10 Partners, “Bumpa is establishing a purpose that we admire and were delighted to get behind, allowing e-commerce and decreasing friction for millions of SMBs.” As we spent more time with Kelvin and Teejay, it became clearer to us that they are exceptional founders with a compelling vision to create the leading e-commerce platform in Nigeria and throughout Africa.

Co-founders Kelvin Umechukwu and Adetunji Opayele founded Bumpa in February 2021 with the goal of offering SMEs in Nigeria cost-effective and reliable websites. At first, the company went under the moniker SalesCabal.

Nigeria is home to 41 million MSMEs, which generate 50% of the country’s GDP, according to a Statista analysis. Nevertheless, despite these figures, business owners all around the nation regularly struggle with problems like a lack of trust, payments, technology, marketing, and others.

Salecabal solved the issue of providing SMEs with a cheap option to begin selling online, but the team would later learn that the e-commerce industry had more serious issues than they had anticipated, as well as greater potential.

In order to make selling online simple for business owners, Adetunji and Kelvin created the first version of the software, Bumpa 1.0, armed with their understanding of the sector and the early success of what had been accomplished with Salescabal.

Using their mobile device from anywhere in the world, business owners could record sales, accept payments, manage orders and inventory, issue invoices and receipts, send bulk SMS and emails to customers, and receive business reports using the first version of the Bumpa app, which also offered free websites for business owners in 60 seconds.

Opeyemi Awoyemi of Fast Forward Venture Studio Fund, together with major VCs and angel investors like Microtraction, OO Nwoye, DFS Labs, Pioneer VC, and others, led a $200k pre-seed round for Bumpa last year. A few months later, the Google Black Founder Fund also gave it a $50,000 award.

The firm was able to expand its workforce thanks to these funding rounds and introduce user features including discounts and coupons, personalized domain names, Facebook pixel integration, staff accounts, and multi-currency checkouts.

The most significant addition, though, happened recently. The startup achieved integration with Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Whatsapp, and Instagram among others, after learning through internal data that 40% of transactions on Bumpa came from Instagram. This enabled selling on Instagram for business owners who sell on social media easier. Due to the fact that it allowed online vendors to seamlessly transition from social media to digital commerce, this feature release strengthened Bumpa’s position as the King of Social Commerce.

Now, without leaving the Bumpa app, users can receive Instagram direct messages, share products, invoices, and receipts, record sales, and submit payment requests on Instagram.

Since its launch, Bumpa has attracted more than 50 thousand SMEs, with 40% of its users actively using the app’s resources on a monthly basis. Additionally, the business claimed to have tracked over 400K product listings and $20M in order value.

“We gained some success with offering websites and other tools for business owners, but when we listened to our clients, we saw that they needed to do more,” said Adetunji, Bumpa’s CTO, in reference to the transition from their pre-seed to their seed round. What resources can we offer them to assist them gain more clientele, increase sales, link to their social media accounts so they can run advertisements, and complete deals more quickly? It was clear that more needed to be done.

Bumpa is currently trying to extend its product offerings by integrating more social commerce solutions for the expanding number of African SMEs in need of digital solutions. This is thanks to the fundraising and the support of investors and partners who share Bumpa’s goal.

With the help of these functions, linkages, and integrations, SMEs will have more control over how they run and expand their companies.

In the upcoming months, Bumpa will also open up additional African markets to its goods. The squad is holding its cards close to its breast despite current rumors over the next markets.

As it prepares to assist more merchants in achieving commercial success, Bumpa will also be growing its workforce with an emphasis on Marketing, Engineering, and Business responsibilities. The startup’s career page should be followed by any interested candidates.

Kelvin, Umechukwu, CEO of Bumpa, in giving his statement about what Bumpa is set to do, had this to say,“ The goal is to do three things: connect, innovate and scale. Bumpa 2.0 for us as a startup is to connect all the relevant tools, channels, and places that SMEs need all in one place: the Bumpa app. It is also to innovate by bringing simpler, automated ways to do any business transaction or operation on the app. It is also to scale our user’s businesses, our position as key players in the African commerce industry, and to scale the capacities and reach of the employees and even we, the founders.”