NIGERIA – Bumpa, a social commerce platform that helps entrepreneurs build custom e-commerce websites, has raised US$4 million in seed funding led by Base10 Partners.
The funding saw 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.
“Bumpa is building a mission that we love and were excited to get behind, enabling e-commerce and reducing friction for millions of SMBs,” Luci Fonseca, Principal at Base10 Partners, said.
“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.”
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.
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 US$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.
“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,” he said.
“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.”
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.
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.
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