Nigerian e-commerce startup Bumpa has announced a $4 million raise in its just-completed seed funding round which was led by Base10 Partners with participation from Plug & Play Ventures commerce fund, SHL Capital, Jedar Capital, Magic Fund, DFS Labs, FirstCheck Africa Angel Program, E62 Ventures, Club14, and Fast Forward Ventures.
In a time when venture funding has seen a steady decline in Africa, Bumpa has garnered the interest of investors and partners on its audacious move to enable business growth for one million SMEs across Africa for its next growth phase.
Luci Fonesca, Principal at Base 10 Partners, who led this round of investment had this to say about investing in Bumpa at this time in the VC market, “Bumpa is building a mission that we love and were excited to get behind, enabling e-commerce and reducing friction for millions of SMBs,” said Luci Fonseca, Principal at Base10 Partners. “The more we spent time with Kelvin and Teejay, the more we saw that they are very special founders and have a powerful mission to build the defining e-commerce platform in Nigeria and across Africa.
Initially named SalesCabal, Bumpa, was started in February 2021 by co-founders, Kelvin Umechukwu and Adetunji Opayele, to provide affordable and stable websites to SMEs in Nigeria.
According to a Statista report, Nigeria houses 41 million MSMEs that contribute 50% of Nigeria’s GDP. However, despite these numbers, business owners across the country deal with daily issues like a lack of trust, payments, technology, marketing, and others.
While Salecabal solved the problem of giving SMEs an affordable way to start selling online, the team would discover that the e-commerce space had more significant problems and equally held more promise than they thought.
Armed with the knowledge of the industry and the initial success of what had been achieved with Salescabal, Adetunji and Kelvin launched the first version of the app, Bumpa 1.0 to make selling online easy for business owners.
The first version of the Bumpa app provided free websites for business owners in 60 seconds and other business management solutions such as the ability to record sales, receive payment, manage orders & inventory, issue invoice &receipts, send bulk SMS and emails to customers, and receive business reports all from their mobile device anywhere and everywhere in the world.
Last year, Bumpa announced a $200k pre-seed round, led by Opeyemi Awoyemi of Fast Forward Venture Studio Fund with other notable VCs and angel investors like Microtraction, OO Nwoye, DFS Labs, Pioneer VC, and more. A few months after, it also received a $50k grant from the Google Black Founder Fund.
These rounds helped the startup hire more employees and roll out user features like discounts and coupons, custom domain names, Facebook pixel integration, staff accounts, and multi-currency checkouts.
However, the most important feature would come just a few months ago. Informed by internal data that showed that 40% of the transactions on Bumpa came from Instagram, the startup completed integration with Meta (parent company of Facebook, Whatsapp, and Instagram among others) that made selling on Instagram faster for business owners that sell on social media. This feature release helped solidify Bumpa’s claim to being the King of Social Commerce, as it bridged the gap between social media and digital commerce for online sellers.
Its users can now receive Instagram DMs on the Bumpa app, share products, share invoices/receipts, record sales, and request payment on Instagram without leaving the Bumpa app.
Bumpa has, since inception, gathered over 50k+ SMEs, who use the app’s resources to run their business, with 40% monthly active users. The company also stated that it has recorded 400K+ product listings and $20M in order value.
Speaking on the journey from their pre-seed to their seed round, Adetunji, Bumpa’s CTO, stated that; “ We achieved some success with providing websites and other tools for business owners, but when we listened to our customers, we discovered that they needed to do more. What tools can we give to help them attract more customers, make more sales, connect to their social media handles to run ads, and close sales faster? We knew it was time to do more”
With the raise and the backing of investors and partners that believe in the vision of Bumpa, the startup is currently looking to expand its product offerings, embedding more social commerce solutions for the growing number African SMEs in need of digital solutions. These features, integrations, and connections will give SMEs more control over how they manage and scale their business.
Bumpa will also be expanding access to its product to new African markets in the coming months. Although there is currently speculation about what markets are up next, the team is keeping its cards close to the chest.
In addition to market expansion, Bumpa will also be expanding its team with a focus on Marketing, Engineering, and Business roles as it prepares to help more merchants achieve business success. Interested applicants should keep an eye on the startup’s career page.
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.”