Bumpa Raises $200k Pre-Seed To Build E-Commerce Solutions For Retail Businesses
The Nigerian startup seeks to expand quickly after raising US$200,000 in pre-seed funding
Bumpa has announced that it has closed a US$200,000 pre-seed funding round to help it reach more merchants and add more features.
The Nigerian startup which helps retailers manage and grow their businesses from their mobile phones, launched in February by Kelvin Umechukwu and Adetunji Opayele.
According to Bumpa, its goal is to help merchants move their business online without the need for programming skills. The platform allows merchants to set up an e-commerce store using their smartphone, accept online and offline payments, manage inventory, handle bookkeeping, fulfill orders, track sales, request dispatch riders, and engage customers.
The startup said it has already onboarded over 7,000 merchants, with a 50 per cent month-on-month growth rate. Merchants have so far listed more than 30,000 products and completed over US$500,000 in recorded transactions.
“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,” Umechukwu stated.
Bumpa revealed that it plans to expand more quickly after banking US$200,000 in pre-seed funding, which comes from Greencap Equity, HOAQ Club, Whogohost Venture Arm, Rizq Investment Group, Microtraction, DFS Labs, Aidi Ventures, Prosper Otemuyiwa, Oo Nwoye, Perfect Makanju and a few other angels. It wants to reach 200,000 merchants within the next year, and will also be expanding its team and rolling out new features to improve support for merchants.
Opeyemi Awoyemi, venture partner and founder of Whogohost, said it was hard to build a Shopify-like solution that would work well for small merchants in Africa.
“The Bumpa team understands this well – it took me less than a minute to set up a shop on Bumpa. They are building fit-for-market tools that will digitise informal markets and create value for millions of existing and first-time sellers,” he said.