VOOM, a startup attempting to modernize one of West Africa’s most fragmented industries is seeking fresh capital after building an early network of verified auto-parts vendors in Ghana.
The Ghana-focused vertical marketplace for automotive spare parts, is raising a $400,000 pre-seed round through a SAFE with a $2 million valuation cap and a 20% discount, according to the company. The startup aims to replace a largely informal ecosystem of WhatsApp transactions, physical market visits and horizontal classified listings with a structured search platform designed specifically for automotive parts.
The company has onboarded 359 verified vendors in Greater Accra and facilitated 394 buyer-vendor conversations this month, according to internal figures shared by the company. Its marketplace currently hosts 880 listings, of which 804 are active.
The effort targets Africa’s automotive aftermarket, a sector estimated by the company at approximately $23.2 billion annually. Despite the size of the market, much of the trade remains highly fragmented, with buyers often relying on personal networks or broad classifieds platforms to locate parts.
Unlike general marketplaces, VOOM allows users to search inventory by vehicle make, model, year and part category. Existing platforms operating in the region, including major classifieds providers, generally lack structured catalog functionality designed specifically for automotive components.
The company says it processed more than 2,100 monthly searches from 189 buyers and generated over 27,000 paid Meta clicks in the last month, at an average cost of approximately $0.011 per click. Vendor subscriptions currently produce gross margins of 78%, according to the startup.
Chief Executive Officer Jim Stephen, a Gabonese-American entrepreneur with more than eight years of enterprise software sales experience, co-founded the business alongside Justice Ayiah, who oversees Ghana operations and previously built an automotive sales and rental business in Accra.
VOOM is also heavy on artificial intelligence expecially in its internal operations such as vendor onboarding and listing generation to investor outreach and operational monitoring. The company says the approach allows its two-person team to operate with the capacity of a much larger organization.
The strategy reflects a broader shift among African startups toward lean operating structures following a period of tighter venture financing across the continent.
VOOM’s model also diverges from previous attempts to build automotive-parts marketplaces in Africa. With the recent shutdown of a Nairobi-based spare parts platform which had raised roughly $1.8 million. VOOM intentionally avoids owning inventory or delivery infrastructure, positioning itself instead as a software and intelligence layer connecting buyers and sellers.
Beyond marketplace revenue, the startup is betting on the commercial value of transaction and search data, expecting future demand-intelligence products to create an additional revenue stream.
With ground operations in Accra, Zoom plans to include additional markets across francophone West Africa, including Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Cameroon and Togo.