He launched his first business, in 2013, while still schooling. Throughout his ongoing professional and entrepreneurial career, he has received several awards and recognitions. His social venture has also earned him the trust of investors like Base10 Partners.
Kelvin Umechukwu (photo) is a Nigerian tech entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and CEO of Bumpa, a social commerce startup that helps merchants set up their businesses online with no programming skills.
Through Bumpa, founded in 2021, he launched a platform that allows merchants to set up their e-stores using just a smartphone. They can also receive online and offline payments, manage inventories and accounting, fulfill orders, track sales, send delivery requests and engage buyers.
In October 2022, Bumpa, which already claims more than 50,000 SMEs served, completed a US$4 million funding round. It aims to expand its product offering by developing Bumpa 2.0, a more advanced version that will incorporate more social commerce solutions for SMEs.
“The goal is to do three things: connect, innovate and scale. Bumpa 2.0 for us as a startup is to connect all the relevant tools, channels, and places that SMEs need all in one place – the Bumpa app. It is also to innovate by bringing simpler, automated ways to do any business transaction or operation on the app. It is also to scale our user’s businesses, our position as key players in the African commerce industry, and to scale the capacities and reach of the employees and even we, the founders,” said Kelvin Umechukwu.
In 2017, the Nigerian entrepreneur, who is a partner of the Lagos chapter of the Google Developers Group since 2018, founded a social venture that facilitates partnerships and collaboration between innovators, builders, and entrepreneurs who solve local problems. His first venture was Cloudshot Technology Ltd, a tech organization founded, in 2013, to create innovative solutions leveraging technologies.
When Cloudshot Technology ceased operations (in 2017) Kelvin Umechukwu joined the web hosting company HostCabal working as a business developer, from January to June 2018. In April 2018, he joined the nonprofit educational organization TechQuest STEM Academy as a community manager. In September of the same year, the organization promoted him to the position of program manager before he became head of business development, in February 2019.
In March 2020, he was hired, as a program manager, by incubator CcHub Nigeria. In October 2022, he was one of the speakers at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference. Thanks to his ventures, he has won several awards and recognitions. In 2016, Cloudshot Technology Ltd earned him a Leadership Award. Two years later, the same venture earned him CodeFest Nigeria Partnership Award. Thanks to TechQuest STEM Academy he also won the IDOS Challenge 2019 sponsored by the foundations “Haus der kleinen Forscher” and Siemens. In 2021, Bumpa was named the Most Innovative Business Management Solution by the African Excellence Awards.
Melchior Koba
