Nigerian e-commerce startup, Bumpa closes $200k pre-seed round to improve support for merchants

Ejike Kanife

A Nigerian e-commerce startup, Bumpa has raised $200,000 in a pre-seed funding round. This was according to an announcement made by the startup and seen by Technext.

Investors that participated in the funding round include Greencap Equity, HOAQ Club, Whogohost Venture Arm, Rizq Investment Group, Microtraction, DFS Labs, Aidi Ventures, Prosper Otemuyiwa, OO Nwoye, Perfect Makanju, and other angel investors.

Founded in February 2021 by Kelvin Umechukwu and Adetunji Opaleye, Bumpa is an e-commerce platform that helps merchants and businesses move their businesses online. This means that merchants who literally have no programming or digital skills are able to set up their e-commerce store using just their smartphones.

Formerly known as Scalescabal, the startup was established in the wake of the Covid-19 lockdowns which made running a small business in Nigeria more difficult than it normally should be.

It also provided an opportunity for businesses to leverage technology tools and the founders who had worked with many small business owners in the past, founded Bumpa to serve this critical need for non-technical eCommerce solutions tailored for the African market.

Bumpa founders with Diusor, a top customer running theajalastore.com on Bumpa

Since its launch, the e-commerce startup says it has onboarded over 7,000 merchants on its platform including retail businesses like The Ajala Store and Lash Ng. It also claims to have recorded a 50% Month-on-Month (MoM) growth rate.

Bumpa says merchants have listed more than 30,000 products on the platform and completed over $500,000 in recorded transactions. They are also able to understand how their business is doing across multiple channels both online and offline.

However, the startup is not resting on its oars as it has a target to reach 200,000 merchants before the end of 2021 according to Co-founder and CEO, Kelvin Umechukwu.

He also said the startup is also looking to expand its team to better empower more small business owners with the tools to grow their businesses. And this is where it intends to channel this new investment.

“Building the operating system for MSMEs in Africa can be daunting but having the right team, very supportive investors, and the best community of customers makes the work fun to do and a lot easier. I believe that a lot of small businesses will thrive as they begin to take advantage of technology for their growth and I’m very excited about the future of commerce in Africa because of what we are building at Bumpa.”

Kelvin Umechukwu, Co-founder & CEO of Bumpa

Bumpa customers are able to manage inventory/products, fulfil orders and track sales, accept online payments, get a free customizable website to list products, request logistics service to help them deliver physical products with ease and engage customers and much more on the go with their smartphones.

They are also able to accept online and offline payments, handle bookkeeping, engage customers easily, all from the ease and comfort of their smartphones.

These offerings by the promising e-commerce newbies made Venture Partner and Founder of Whogohost, Opeyemi Awoyemi to describe it as the ‘Shopify’ of Africa, stressing that building such a platform is no mean feat.

“It took me less than a minute to set up a shop on Bumpa. The Bumpa team is building fit-for-market tools that will digitize informal markets and create value for millions of existing and first-time sellers,” he said.

The startup was recently admitted into the Microsoft for Startups program which gives free technical consultations and access to corporate partnerships to growth-stage startups.


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