Bumpa repositions itself as “the King of Social Commerce” with the announcement of a partnership with Meta.

Bumpa, a Lagos-based inventory management and mobile store builder, declared itself the king of social commerce this week, and appropriately so. Its recent update puts them miles ahead of the competition and sets them up for a long race to catch up. The company has integrated with Meta to allow social merchants on its platform to manage their direct messages (DMs) from Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp directly on Bumpa, without having to go to any of the Meta platforms. This simple but powerful update is expected to skyrocket the startup’s growth.

According to the startup’s co-founder and CEO, Kelvin Umechukwu, who spoke with TechCabal over the phone, “this integration is starting off with Instagram—since 40% of the sales recorded on the Bumpa app come from Instagram—while Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp will follow in due time.” This means that business owners who connect their Instagram business accounts with Bumpa can now receive Instagram DM queries immediately on their Bumpa app, allowing them to sell their products more quickly and easily.

This combination is the ideal match for the two firms’ ambitions. On the one hand, it is consistent with Meta’s ambition of making its messaging app family the primary way businesses engage with their clients. On the other hand, it fulfills Bumpa’s overarching goal of streamlining operations.
Meta arguably controls about half of the world’s social commerce traffic, with over 2.4 billion active monthly users on WhatsApp, over 1 billion on Facebook Messenger, and over 2 billion on Instagram.

The widespread use of social media in Africa, fueled by a rising youth population and internet access, is fueling the rise of social commerce on the continent. And, like a domino effect, the number of social-commerce businesses generating smart innovations to boost the sector’s growth has begun to climb. Aside from the numerous fintech startups that facilitate social payment, two close examples are Catlog, a startup that assists merchants in optimizing sales on WhatsApp, and Simpu, a startup that helps businesses consolidate all of their communication platforms under one umbrella.

Bumpa’s growth is fascinating to watch in real-time. While the corporation prioritizes product expansion, it is also undertaking significant market expansion movements into Ghana.

When Bumpa closed its $200,000 pre-seed round in September of last year, Umechukwu told TechCabal that the company wants to develop everything small businesses need to succeed online. Almost 11 months later, the objective has shifted to connecting, rather than providing, everything small businesses require for day-to-day operations.