Bumpa, a Nigerian social commerce platform that helps entrepreneurs build custom e-commerce websites, has raised $4 million in seed funding led by Base10 Partners, with participation from Plug & Play Ventures, SHL Capital, Magic Fund, Jedar Capital, DFS Labs, FirstCheck Africa Angel Program, E62 Ventures, Club 14, and Fast Forward Ventures.

According to a statement from the company, Bumpa sought investors interested in e-commerce and retail automation in Africa for this seed round.

Why The Investors Invested

Since its inception, the firm has gained significant traction. Bumpa, according to its co-founder and CEO, Kelvin Umechukwu, has over 50,000 small companies on its platform. Umechukwu also said that these companies had received over 200,000 orders and transacted a total of $20 million in gross merchandise value. He went on to say that his best success with Bumpa was when a user reached 10,000 orders and climbed from 15 orders per week to 200 orders per week.

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“Bumpa is building a mission that we love and were excited to get behind, enabling e-commerce and reducing friction for millions of SMBs. 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,” Speaking on the raise, Luci Fonseca, Principal at Base10 Partners, said.

“With their intuitive mobile-first user experience, Bumpa is leapfrogging how small merchants transact and provide a meaningful experience to customers. Kelvin and Teejay have built a sticky product and we are excited to back the team on their mission to reinvent commerce for merchants across Africa,” George Damouny, Partner at Plug and Play Ventures, said. 

A Look At What The Startup Does

Bumpa, founded in 2021 by Kelvin Umechukwu and Adetunji Opayele, began by assisting businesses with managing inventory, engaging consumers, and recording transactions. According to Umechukwu, they now want to go a step further and assist these tiny firms link everything.

“With Bumpa, we’re helping business owners organise all the commerce that’s happening on their social media. They can see their top customers. They can see how much they’re making on each of these social media platforms, like Instagram. They can collect all the records, and they can sell faster through direct messaging (DMs) and request for payments because we brought all of the commerce tools right there for them in their DMS while chatting with a customer,” he said.

Bumpa presently thinks that it can assist its customers save 25 hours each week, according to Umechukwu.

Bumpa operates on a commission and subscription basis. After merging with Meta in August, the business began charging commissions on each online transaction and launched a subscription programme. Users may continue to use Bumpa for free, but they are restricted to 25 goods and 50 orders each month.

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In recent times, there has been a lot of activity in the social commerce startup area in Nigeria, with fintechs like Paystack and Flutterwave creating storefronts for small companies and startups like Catlog and Simpu both providing solutions for SMEs who wish to sell their products online. According to Umechukwu, Bumpa’s competitive edge originates from its concentration on retail automation and data and inventory optimization for its clients. He went on to say that Bumpa’s connection with Meta in August, as well as an anticipated integration with Google Business in November, will help set it apart from the competition.

Bumpa was founded after the founders collaborated on the web hosting firm HostCabal.

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