Toronto-based Fyyne, which offers a marketplace for beauty services and business management tools for independent beauticians, has been acquired by Nigerian e-commerce firm Bumpa.
Both companies declined to disclose the financial terms of the deal, which closed this summer. The move comes about a year and a half after Fyyne launched its beauty tech platform and secured an undisclosed amount of pre-seed funding. Through its strategic acquisition of Fyyne, Bumpa hopes to help fuel its expansion into new markets.
Bumpa is developing a Shopify-like e-commerce platform to help African small business owners start, manage, and grow their companies from their mobile devices. In tandem with this acquisition, Fyyne has also launched a redesigned Bumpa-powered version of its app.
Fyyne’s team was already comprised of Nigerian employees in Toronto and Lagos, where Bumpa is headquartered.
“Bumpa is very aligned with our mission at Fyyne and they have been doing similar work to great success in the Nigerian market,” Fyyne co-founder and outgoing CEO Jeffrey Fasegha told BetaKit, adding that the combination “made a lot of sense” for both parties. Fasegha noted that while Fyyne has been exploring the idea of moving into the African market—where Bumpa has “deep expertise”—Bumpa has been preparing to bring its products west.
Founded in late 2020 by Fasegha and former University of Toronto classmates Olugbenga Olubanjo and Al-Ameen Ogundiran, Fyyne set out to improve Black haircare accessibility, while also building all of the tools that Black barbers and hairstylists need to run their businesses. Fyyne had raised a total of $300,000 from a list of backers that included BKR Capital, Techstars, Google for Startups, and Shutterstock founder Jon Oringer.
As Fasegha previously told BetaKit, Fyyne’s goal was to help “formalize what has been a historically informal industry.” In January 2022, Fyyne launched a mobile app that allowed users to search for, book and pay for Black hairstyling services and enabled independent Black hairstylists and barbers to market and commercialize their skills.
Fyyne later expanded into beauty services more broadly, began catering to a wider range of groups, and moved into the United States and the United Kingdom.
Notably, Fyyne’s team consisted largely of employees of Nigerian descent, half of whom were located in Toronto and half in Lagos, where Bumpa is headquartered.
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According to Fasegha, Bumpa has acquired Fyyne’s tech, customers, and some members of its team. Going forward, Fyyne will continue operating as a standalone platform. Olubanjo and Ogundiran have left Fyyne as part of the deal, while Fasegha has transitioned to an advisory role, with plans to remain involved with the business in this capacity for the foreseeable future. Bumpa intends to announce Fyyne’s next CEO soon.
Founded in 2021 by CEO Kelvin Umechukwu and CTO Adetunji Opayele, Bumpa helps merchants set up and run e-commerce stores using their smartphones. The startup’s platform enables clients to manage inventory, accept payments, handle bookkeeping, fulfill orders, track sales, request dispatch delivery, and engage with customers. Last year, Bumpa raised $4 million in seed funding to support its growth.
Fasegha claimed that there were some technical problems that Fyyne solved around instant payments and other industry-specific issues that Bumpa has already been able to learn from.
“Bumpa got its start in the ‘informal economy’ and we did the same thing but in the West,” noted Fasegha, who said he is excited “to see how Nigerian innovation can spread to the world and how Western learnings can be applied in Nigeria.”
Feature image courtesy Fyyne.
