Bamba, founded in 2022 by serial entrepreneur and investor Bastian Gotter, is a mobile application focusing on simple tools for merchants to manage their customers, record stocks, receive payments, and access cash advances against their future cash flow.
Commenting on the raise, Bastian Gotter, Founder & CEO of Bamba, 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 and the team and gives us access to insights from our high calibre of investment partners.”
Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises account for 90 per cent of all businesses in sub-Saharan Africa and contribute more than half of all jobs. In 2021, registered and unregistered merchants accepted over $250 billion in mobile money payments, recording rapid growth. The mixture of receiving/paying out cash or mobile money creates new complexities for merchants; however, it also creates opportunities to further digitalise business payment and record-keeping processes.
This digitalisation process has the potential to vastly improve access to credit, one of the most significant hurdles preventing the growth of small businesses in Africa. The IFC estimates Sub-Saharan Africa's small business credit gap at $331 billion, and Bamba's mobile application sits at the heart of the digitalisation process, improving both the payments experience and the access to credit for micro-merchants.
According to the CEO, Bamba is currently in stealth mode and will use the new capital to build out its mobile product offer, scale its engineering team and expand its user base across 12 sub-Saharan African countries with high mobile money penetration.
