Topship, a digital freight forwarding firm, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding from institutional and individual investors. The cash will be used to establish the most convenient way for African businesses to export and import parcels and cargo to their customers, suppliers, and distributors around the world.
Flexport led the round, with participation from Y Combinator-Soma Capital, Starling Ventures, Olive Tree Capital, Capital X, and True Capital. Individual investors in the round include Mercury CEO Immad Akhund and Dropbox co-founder Arash Ferdowsi.
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Topship was formed in 2020, during the epidemic, after co-founder and CEO Moses Enenwali noted an increase in merchants’ needs for delivering parcels and goods outside of Nigeria. Following his stint with transportation company ACE Logistics and e-commerce fulfilment supplier Sendbox, he had developed ties with these merchants.
Topship, according to Enewali, enables 1,500 businesses to ship cargo and parcels from Nigeria to over 150 nations. Although it can assist Nigerian merchants in receiving parcel delivery from the other side, it can only accept cargo deliveries from the United States, the United Kingdom, and China.
Enewali stated that the company is looking at other revenue streams, such as trade financing and customs clearing fees. Since joining YC in January, the company’s revenue has increased by 50% month over month.
“I think what YC does more than anything is just drive you to delve as far as you can into understanding your users,” the CEO said of Topship’s revenue increase following YC.
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“Looking ahead, much of it stems from the mindset of the user being the most essential piece of the jigsaw, and we must be obsessed about it. We’re incorporating all of the learnings and insights we’ve gained from our users over the last five or six months into the product in a merchant-focused manner “He stated.
Topship serves a diverse group of users. Topship is a borderline local and international shipping solution between digital freight and e-commerce fulfilment, from a merchant moving tons of heavy equipment and a solo entrepreneur sending parcels to a student mailing documents to a school overseas and a Gen Z shopping from a foreign store. Flexport has invested in various African startups in both categories, including Trella, Flextock, ShipBlu, Sendbox, and Freeterium.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert.
As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard. You can book a session and speak with him using the link: https://insightsbyexperts.com/view_expert/charles-rapulu-udoh