Kenyan-based mobile-first enterprise software startup, Bamba, has raised $3.2 million in its seed funding round. The company, which is currently in stealth mode, said it would use the newly raised funds to upscale its engineering team, and further develop its application.
The seed funding round was led by 468 Capital. Additional participations came from investment firms like Presight Ventures, and Jigsaw VC.
A number of high profile angel investors like Mato Peric, Leonard Stiegeler, Laurin Hainy and Thomas Stafford, also participated in the funding round.
Bamba was founded in 2022 by Bastian Gotter – who is a co-founder of Nigerian-based on-demand video platform, iRokoTV. Gotter founded Bamba after spending time in Kenya, and realizing that many businesses still rely on manual book-keeping, without a reliable record for cash and mobile money transactions.
Discovering this, Gotter decided to fill the gap by creating a solution for Micro, Small and Medium scale businesses, which makes up about 90% businesses in Sub-Saharan Africa.
“They also recorded stock components and had some form of customer relationship management on WhatsApp. It wasn’t a coherent picture and was just a big mess, and that’s where we ultimately saw an opportunity to launch Bamba,” Gotter told TechCrunch.
Speaking on how Bamba solves enterprise problems, Gotter said the app helps MSMEs to run their business by providing them with features that assist them to manage customers, record stock levels, and receive and make payments.
“Merchants can record what cash and mobile money transactions they collect and their cash and mobile money payouts. And through that initial record keeping, we have an entry point into the business. […] We have the inventory management components that tie in with how many and which goods are sold. Then the payments bit ultimately resulting in a point of sale type devices like Square or Yoco that lets you get a clearer picture of your business and your activities,” said Gotter.
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Gotter also made comments on the seed fund raised, he said:
“We truly believe entrepreneurship is essential to prosperity, so we make running a small business easier by building mobile-first small business software for Africa. This investment allows us to scale the platform, the team and gives us access to insights from our high calibre of investment partners.”
While also commenting on the fundraise, Ludwig Ensthaler, Partner, 468 Capital, said:
“We are thrilled to invest and support the team and vision at Bamba. We feel that the investment opportunities in “enterprise” software focused on small businesses in Africa are significant and remain largely untapped. We believe that Bamba is well placed with a great product and a solid founder to build a category-defining company.”
Fabian Hansen, Investor, Presight Ventures, also mentioned that:
“We appreciate entrepreneurs that build novel solutions that push boundaries and are thrilled to support Bamba’s potential impact across the small businesses ecosystem in Africa.”
Bamba, according to Gotter, is working to improve cash collection for merchants primarily done via USSD and M-Pesa pay bill numbers at point-of-sale.