Nigeria’s Bumpa Gets $4 Million In Seed Funding Round Led By The World’s Largest Black-led Fund Base10 Partners

Bumpa, formerly known as Scalescabal, provides an opportunity for merchants to take advantage of technology tools to promote their businesses. Last September, the startup secured $200,000 in pre-seed funding from investors like Greencap Equity, HOAQ Club, Whogohost Venture Arm, Rizq Investment Group, Microtraction, DFS Labs, Aidi Ventures, Prosper Otemuyiwa, OO Nwoye, Perfect Makanju, and other angel investors. Founded in 2021 by Kelvin Umechukwu and Adetunji Opaleye, Bumpa is an e-commerce solution startup that helps African merchants move, manage and grow their businesses online, right from their mobile phones. With Bumpa, merchants who do not possess any form of programming or digital skills can set up their e-commerce store using just their smartphones. Businesses are helped to promote and sell on social media platforms such as Instagram, Whatsapp, and Facebook, as well as offline.

Bumpa has secured $4 million in seed funding and the round was led by the world’s largest Black-led fund Base10 Partners. Other investors that participated in the round include Fast Forward Ventures, Plug and Play Ventures, SHL Capital, Jedar Capital, Magic Fund, DFS Labs, FirstCheck Africa Angel Program, Club14, and E62 Ventures. 

Bumpa has evolved from what it started with – taking small businesses online. The need to evolve came as the startup had to meet the increasing demands of businesses on its platform. It now offers sales and booking, inventory tracking capabilities as well as the ability to store customer details by merchants. 

“We’re trying to solve the inefficiencies small businesses face as most of them have operated in a black hole for the longest time. They don’t have enough data and insights into what’s happening, what’s being sold, and how their products are being sold. While many startups are trying to solve this, we’re doing it differently. We’re evolving, and we consider our features as the foundation of what is possible with Bumpa,” the startup’s CEO explained. 

Today, there are many options for small businesses providing them with products that such as bookkeeping, inventory management, etc., that can digitalize their operations. In August, made a change; it now approaches small businesses as a retail automation company and not an embedded finance platform. “I think the ideology and the product direction between Bumpa and other companies differ. Most of them have fintech elements; we are not trying to be fintech — we’re in the retail automation space. We’re not trying to solve things in fintech that have already been solved. There are new things that have not been tested before, like the Meta integration,” CEO Kelvin Umechukwu explained.

Our big announcement is finally here!

Bumpa has now integrated Meta to make selling on Instagram 5x faster!

Business owners can now connect their Instagram business account with Bumpa, receive Instagram DMs directly on their Bumpa app & sell products @ Bumpa speed.#BumpaXMeta pic.twitter.com/DMRrW2HEpN

— Bumpa (@getBumpa) August 1, 2022

Thanks to its integration with Meta, Bumpa merchants can now their Instagram and Facebook account to their Bumpa apps. This feature allows them to receive direct messages from their customers and even respond using the Bumpa app. In addition, they can share and sell their products, share invoices and/or receipts, keep records of sales, keep the information of their customers, request payments on the Bumpa app while it reflects on their customer’s DMs, etc. In essence, merchants can do all these and more within the Bumpa app and their customers or potential customer does not need more than the social media platform they already use and love. 

Bumpa’s CEO says that this integration will take the startup to its next level; bringing various digital solutions essential to the daily operations of small businesses and integrating them under the social commerce and retail automation platform. The integration has also received praise within the tech space. 

“There’s so much fragmentation in the space. A business owner probably uses up to 10 solutions, including social media, payments, invoicing, logistics, and marketplace apps. But none of these solutions communicate with one another. We want to be that connecting platform on the continent. The idea now is to connect all of these solutions and channels that small businesses use together with a click of a button and basically facilitate the transfer of information for efficiency,” CEO Kelvin Umechukwu said.

These integrations can be accessed via a subscription plan by interested merchants. This will provide the startup with an additional income stream.

“The more we spent time with Kelvin and Adetunji Opayele (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,” Luci Fonseca, a principal at Base10 Partners, who emphasized that Bumpa is enabling e-commerce and reducing friction for millions of SMBs said.