Nigerian startup Bumpa raises $4 million in seed funding

Bumpa, a Nigerian-based startup that provides digital e-commerce solutions for the growing number of small and medium-sized businesses in Africa, has secured $4 million in a seed funding round led by Base10 Partners with participation from nine other investors.

• Last September, Bumpa announced a $200k pre-seed round, led by Fast Forward Venture Studio Fund with other notable VCs and angel investors. A few months later, it got a $50,000 grant from the Google Black Founder Fund. These rounds helped the startup hire more people and give users discounts and coupons, custom domain names, Facebook pixel integration, staff accounts, and the ability to pay in more than one currency.
• Since its launch in 2021 launch, Bumpa claims to have helped more than 50k small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) move their businesses online to run their businesses without the need for programming skills, with 40% of them using it monthly. The company also said it had kept track of more than 400K product listings and $20M orders.
• The startup which previously went by the name Salescabal, in the first version of its app, gave business owners free websites they could set up in 60 seconds. It also helped them manage their businesses by letting them track sales, get paid, work orders and inventory, send bulk SMS and emails to customers and bring business reports from their mobile devices in any part of the world.
• The startup also integrated with Meta, which owns Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, allowing its users to get Instagram direct messages (DMs) on the Bumpa app, share products, share invoices/receipts, track sales, and ask for payment on Instagram without leaving the Bumpa app. This was done based on internal data that showed that 40% of Bumpa’s sales came from Instagram.
• With the new funding, the startup plans its second phase to expand its product line and add more social commerce solutions for users, expand its team and venture into more markets in Africa.
• With millions of SMEs still operate inefficiently due to dependency on manual processes, which limits their capacity to grow and scale. This new development presents an opportunity for underserved SMEs to leverage the use of the platform to give their business more recognition and ease the process of transaction between them and their customers.