Bumpa raises a $200,000 pre-seed round to build the Shopify for Africa

Bumpa, has announced the close of its $200,000 pre-seed round as it looks to help retailers manage and grow their businesses.

Previously known as Salescabal, Bumpa has been on a journey of empowering African retailers with the solutions they need to grow their business in the 21st century. Inspired by the grit and consistency of African retailers, Bumpa's cofounders Kelvin Umechukwu and Adetunji Opayele are on a journey to help them achieve even more.

The pair met 8 years ago while they were both students at the Obafemi Awolowo University, and have been friends since then, working together on several iterations of the project that would later become Bumpa.

"We believe that small business owners are paramount to unlocking unprecedented economic prosperity in Africa and other emerging markets, we are inspired by being a part of their journey on a day-to-day basis" the cofounders said to Benjamindada.com in an interview.

Since its relaunch in February 2021, Bumpa has achieved several milestones, winning the Pioneer Startup Competition and getting into Microsoft for Startups.

The company provides infrastructure for non tech-savvy merchants to move their business online and manage it all from the screen of their mobile phone. Merchants who use Bumpa get access to their own website, ability to handle online and offline payments, inventory management, bookkeeping, order fulfilment, sales tracking, dispatch rider request, and customer engagement tools at one go.

The startup has even been nicknamed the "Shopify for Africa" in certain quarters. Its similarity to the Canadian company is uncanny in that it provides a way for merchants to quickly set up online store. However, Bumpa is building in features that are unique to the African eCommerce ecosystem.

Between its February 2021 launch and this fundraise announcement, Bumpa has onboarded over 7000 merchants who have listed 30,000+ products and completed over $500,000 in closed sales.

Speaking on its recent raise, Bumpa CEO and Co-founder, Kelvin Umechukwu, had this to say “Building the operating system for MSMEs in Africa can be daunting but having the right team, very supportive investors, and the best community of customers makes the work fun to do and a lot easier. I believe that a lot of small businesses will thrive as they begin to take advantage of technology for their growth and I’m very excited about the future of commerce in Africa because of what we are building at Bumpa.”

The pre-seed round had participation from Greencap Equity, Whogohost Venture Arm, Rizq Investment Group, Microtraction, DFS Labs, Prosper Otemuyiwa, Oo Nwoye, and a few others.

Speaking on the investment in Bumpa, Opeyemi Awoyemi, Venture Partner and Founder of Whogohost said, “It’s hard to build a “Shopify'' that would work well for small merchants in Africa. The Bumpa team understands this well - it took me less than a minute to set up a shop on Bumpa. They are building fit-for-market tools that will digitize informal markets and create value for millions of existing and first-time sellers”.

Following its raise, Bumpa is looking to empower more small business owners with the tools to grow their businesses. Within the next year, the startup wants to reach 200,000 merchants.

Bumpa will also be expanding its team and rolling out new features to better support merchants as it looks to help onboarded businesses grow their sales by at least 20% MoM.