Topship - Afrikan Heroes

Nigerian Digital Freight Forwarding Startup Topship Raises $2.5M

May 17, 2022

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.

Topship co-founder and CEO Moses Enenwali

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.

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.

“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.

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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

Topship Plans to be “Flexport for SMEs Across Africa”

August 15, 2021

Topship, the Nigerian startup launched at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic plans to become the “Flexport for African SMEs, connecting merchants on the continent with the rest of the world. Topship with over 300 recurring merchants, is growing by 20 per cent month-on-month, and has opened eight fulfilment centres in Nigeria, and has over 30 active partners in its global network.

Moses Enenwali, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Topship is optimistic about the mission of the startup. According to him, “We are a shipping platform that connects African merchants and SMEs with the rest of the world with imports and exports fulfilled within three to five working days. Nigerian merchants are realising that there’s a huge market outside the country, and we’re working hard to bridge that gap and ensure that they can access new markets and new audiences, and do this as easily as possible.”

The startup’s platform allows merchants to select from a wide range of shipping options, like express, basic, and cargo, based on a variety of factors, needs and criteria, such as price and delivery time.

“We’ve also made it incredibly easy to ship cargo internationally for merchants,” said Enenwali.

The need for such a solution was made all the more clear by the COVID-19 crisis.

“It was interesting to observe that as the global economy was slowing down due to the lockdowns, demand for international shipping was skyrocketing. The obvious demand, clear pain points and gap in the market strengthened our conviction, so we started building,” Enenwali said.

“We like to say we’re building Flexport for African SMEs. Our goal is to be the shipping platform for African businesses.”

Bootstrapped at launch, Topship raised an angel round of funding in March of this year to help it hit its next set of milestones. Growth has been consistent.

“We’re growing rapidly, and are very aggressive about growth. We’ve maintained an average of 20 per cent monthly growth since we launched, reception has been good, and demand remains strong, which continues to reinforce our faith in the industry,” said Enenwali.

“We’ve built a web app that makes it very easy for merchants to request shipments, get different prices for different shipping services and import goods from around the world.”

Topship, which charges fees on transactions made on its platform and also revenue-sharing agreements with partners, is currently focused on making it easier for Nigerian merchants to access global markets by shipping their goods easily from importing to their doorsteps from anywhere in the world.

“We are already operating in every state in Nigeria, with plans to open processing centres nationwide. With Nigeria opening up to the world and increasing exports to other countries, we’re currently getting on the wave. We believe that local manufacturers in places like Lagos, Ibadan and Kano would like to take advantage of this opportunity, and in the next couple of years we would establish a presence across the continent, as it is our mission to serve African merchants,” said Enenwali.

“In addition to focusing on growth, we’ve also been heavy on making money every day and generating revenue, so that has been happening since day one, and we would continue to push that upwards.”

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry