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Millions of small and medium-sized businesses still rely on manual processes and operate inefficiently, limiting their ability to grow and scale; This is despite the fact that it has contributed 48 percent to Nigeria’s GDP in the last five years
But the tide is turning. Over the past couple of months, we’ve seen the launch of solutions aimed at digitizing small businesses. Recently, Bumpa, which claims to be building infrastructure to empower internet marketing and enable African small business owners to start, manage and grow from their mobile devices, has raised around $4 million in seed funding.
The company announced It raised $200,000 in early seed funding last September, saying it intends to invest in hiring talent, building processes, infrastructure and expanding into new African markets.
Founded by Kelvin Umechuchu and Adetunji Opayele, Bumpa intends to invest in hiring talent, building its processes and structure, and expanding into new African markets. It announced a $200,000 pre-seed round last September.
The history of the platform In 2018, founders Kelvin Umechukwu and Adetunji Opayele—who ran another startup that included consulting for small businesses—built websites for small business owners looking to get online for the first time. Subsequent versions were developed in the image of Shopify: a basic website builder that small businesses can use without much help.
However, after gaining some traction, it was clear that Bumpa needed to evolve to meet the needs of growing businesses on the platform, including managing sales and accounting, tracking inventory and storing customer details. It also helped that both founders came from families of small business owners, so they had a first-hand view of these problems.
And when Covid hit in 2020 and businesses moved more online, Bumpa went back to the drawing board, revamped the product and launched a new version the following year. This version allows businesses Create websites, accept payments, manage inventory, manage accounting, fulfill orders and engage customers in “60 seconds”.
“We’re trying to address the inefficiencies that small businesses face because most of them have been operating in a black hole for so long. They don’t have enough information and understanding of what is happening, what is being sold and how their products are being sold,” CEO Umechuchu said in a call with TechCrunch. “While many startups are trying to solve this, we’re doing it differently. We’re a work in progress, and we base our behavior on what’s possible with Bumpa.
Bumpa 2.0: Integrating Product Ecosystems
Today, small businesses in Nigeria are spoiled for choice with products that can digitize their operations, including accounting, invoicing and inventory management, in addition to Bumpa. Some include pastels, Kippa And Brave.
In August, Bumpa made a messaging move: It rebranded its relationship with small businesses as a retail automation company, not an integrated finance platform.
“I think the ideology and product direction between Bumpa and other companies differ. Most of them have fintech components; we’re not trying to be fintech – we’re in the retail automation space,” CEO Umechukwu said. There are new things in meta integration that have not been tried before.
Integrating Bumpa with Meta allows merchants to connect their Instagram and Facebook accounts to their Bumpa app, receive DMs from their customers, and respond via the Bumpa app. The integration allows them to share and sell products, share invoices/receipts, record sales, store buyer information and request payments on the Bumpa app while mirroring their customers’ Instagram DMS. All of these transactions happen without the merchant leaving Bumpa and the buyer without leaving Instagram.
Many tech watchers have praised Meta’s integration, which, according to Umechukwu, will carry Bumpa into its next phase: bringing various digital solutions essential to small businesses’ day-to-day operations and merging them under a platform of social commerce and retail automation.
“There is too much fragmentation in space. A business owner probably uses up to 10 solutions, including social media, payments, invoicing, logistics, and marketplace applications. But none of these solutions are compatible,” he said. “We want to be that connecting platform across the continent. Now the idea is to connect all these solutions and channels that small businesses use with the click of a button and basically streamline the flow of information.”
That said, Bumpa doesn’t go into this Herculean task blindly. Priority is given based on orders and tasks completed on the platform. For example, the reason for the meta integration was that 40% of the orders on Bumppa came from Instagram and WhatsApp. And in a bid to bring chat commerce to over 50,000 small businesses on the platform, the next couple include WhatsApp, Messenger and Google My Business. The game is similar to what Charles has in Europe.
But these combinations are not mutually exclusive. Bumpa locked them into a subscription plan to supplement their first revenue stream: commissions on online transactions. Umechuchu said subscriptions doubled Bumpa’s revenue from Q2 to Q3 this year. In total, Bumpa has completed more than 200,000 orders and recorded a GMV of more than $20 million since its inception.
Base10 Partners, the world’s largest black-led fund, is the lead investor in Bumpa’s seed round. It is the firm’s second investment in Africa after Nigerian API fintech Okra. Other participating investors include Plug & Play Ventures, SHL Capital, emerging market-focused fund Magic Fund, Jedar Capital, DFS Labs, FirstCheck Africa Angel Program, E62 Ventures, Club14 and Fast Forward Ventures.
According to Opeyemi Awoyemi, Managing Partner of Fast Forward Ventures, Bumpa is doing what Shopify did in North America for Africa. And citing why the company is doubling down on the social commerce platform after its initial $30,000 pre-seed round, Bumpa says it’s “unlocking prosperity (and massive GDP) for millions of new and existing sellers.” The firm’s business partner, Omolara Aweimi, is Bumpa’s chief operating officer.
Meanwhile, in a statement, Lucy Fonseca, principal of Base10 Partners, said Bumpa is enabling e-commerce and reducing friction for millions of SMBs. “The more time we spent with Kelvin and Adetunji Opayele (Tejay), we saw that they are very special founders and have a powerful mission to build the e-commerce platform in Nigeria and across Africa,” she added.
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