Nigerian startup Bumpa, a one-stop-shop for retail merchants in Africa, plans international growth after seeing impressive early uptake and banking pre-seed funding.
Launched in February 2021 by Kelvin Umechukwu and Adetunji Opayele, Bumpa helps merchants move their business online without the need for programming skills. The platform allows them 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.
“Bumpa is a complete business suite for SMEs. We like to think of Bumpa as the Shopify for Africa, built by Africans who have context on issues that affect African retailers,” Opayele said.
“The African market has a gap for non-technical e-commerce solutions, which is what Bumpa has created. The product has all the tools merchants need to manage and grow their businesses online with ease.”
Early uptake has been impressive. The startup has onboarded thousands of merchants and listed over 30,000 products, and plans further growth after securing funding in September. The US$200,000 in pre-seed funding came 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. Bumpa 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.
“We have plans to expand into neighbouring countries in the near future,” Umechukwu said.
