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Millions of small and medium businesses still operate inefficiently due to dependency on manual processes, which limits their capacity to grow and scale; this is despite contributing to about 48% of Nigeria\u2019s GDP in the last five years,<\/span><\/p>\n But the tide is turning. Over the last couple of months, we\u2019ve seen a wave of upstarts launching solutions geared toward digitizing small business operations. In the latest development, Bumpa, one of them which says it is building the infrastructure to power online commerce and enable African small business owners to start, manage and grow their businesses from their mobile devices, has raised a $4 million seed round.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The company, which announced a $200,000 pre-seed last September, said it intends to use the investment to hire talent, build up its processes, structure, and scale into new African markets.<\/span><\/p>\n The platform\u2019s origin story can be traced to 2018 when founders\u00a0 Kelvin Umechukwu and Adetunji Opayele \u2014 while running another startup that involved consulting for small businesses \u2014 built websites for small business owners interested in coming online for the first time. Subsequent versions were tailored in Shopify\u2019s image: a basic website builder small businesses could use without much assistance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n However, after gaining little traction, it was clear that Bumpa had to evolve to meet the growing demands of businesses on the platform, including recording sales and bookkeeping, inventory tracking, and storing customer details. It also helped that both founders came from families of small business owners, so they had a firsthand view of these problems. <\/span><\/p>\n And as businesses moved online in droves when COVID hit in 2020, Bumpa returned to the drawing board, revamped its product and launched a new version into the market the following year. This version lets businesses<\/span> create websites in \u201c60 seconds,\u201d accept payments, manage inventory, handle bookkeeping, fulfil orders and engage customers.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re trying to solve the inefficiencies small businesses face as most of them have operated in a black hole for the longest time. They don\u2019t have enough data and insights into what\u2019s happening, what\u2019s being sold and how their products are being sold,\u201d CEO Umechukwu said on a call with . \u201cWhile many startups are trying to solve this, we\u2019re doing it differently. We\u2019re evolving, and we consider our features as the foundation of what is possible with Bumpa.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n These days, small businesses in Nigeria are spoilt with options, in addition to Bumpa, for products that can digitize their operations, including bookkeeping, invoicing and inventory management. Some include Pastel, <\/span>Kippa<\/span>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/span>OZ\u00c9<\/span>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In August, Bumpa made a move that conveyed a message: It approached its relationship with small businesses differently as a retail automation company, not an embedded finance platform.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI 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 \u2014 we\u2019re in the retail automation space,\u201d CEO Umechukwu expressed. \u201cWe\u2019re 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.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nBumpa 2.0: Integrating an ecosystem of products<\/span><\/h2>\n