Toronto-based Fyyne, a leading marketplace for beauty services and business management tools tailored for independent beauticians, has recently been acquired by Nigerian e-commerce firm Bumpa.

The deal’s financial details, concluded this summer, were not disclosed. This strategic move occurred approximately 18 months after Fyyne’s debut in the beauty tech sector, backed by an undisclosed amount of pre-seed funding. The acquisition aligns with Bumpa’s vision to expand into new markets, leveraging Fyyne’s expertise.

“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.

Bumpa, akin to a Shopify-style e-commerce platform, focuses on empowering African small business owners to initiate, oversee, and scale their enterprises through mobile devices. In conjunction with the acquisition, Fyyne has unveiled a revamped version of its app, now powered by Bumpa.

Fyyne’s team, which already included Nigerian employees based in Toronto and Lagos, where Bumpa is headquartered, shares a joint mission with Bumpa. Fasegha said the collaboration “made a lot of sense” as both companies had similar successful initiatives in the Nigerian market. While Fyyne contemplated entering the African market, where Bumpa possesses deep expertise, Bumpa was gearing up to introduce its products in the West.

Established in late 2020 by Fasegha and his former University of Toronto classmates Olugbenga Olubanjo and Al-Ameen Ogundiran, Fyyne aimed to enhance accessibility in Black haircare. The startup raised $300,000 from backers such as BKR Capital, Techstars, Google for Startups, and Shutterstock founder Jon Oringer. Fyyne’s mission expanded to formalize the historically informal Black hairstyling industry, culminating in launching a mobile app in January 2022. The app facilitated users in searching, booking, and paying for Black hairstyling services while enabling independent hairstylists to market and commercialize their skills.

Over time, Fyyne broadened its scope to encompass a more comprehensive array of beauty services and expanded its presence to the United States and the United Kingdom. Fasegha noted that Bumpa’s acquisition includes Fyyne’s technology, customer base, and some team members. Fyyne will operate as a standalone platform in the future, with Fasegha transitioning to an advisory role. Co-founders Olubanjo and Ogundiran have departed as part of the deal, and Bumpa plans to announce Fyyne’s next CEO soon.

Bumpa, founded in 2021 by CEO Kelvin Umechukwu and CTO Adetunji Opayele, assists merchants in establishing and managing e-commerce stores via smartphones. The platform facilitates inventory management, payment processing, bookkeeping, order fulfillment, sales tracking, dispatch delivery requests, and customer engagement. Bumpa secured $4 million in seed funding the previous year to fuel its growth.

Fasegha highlighted that Fyyne had resolved technical challenges related to instant payments and other industry-specific issues, contributing valuable insights to Bumpa. Fasegha also expressed excitement about the collaboration, emphasizing the potential for Nigerian innovation to influence the global landscape and the reciprocal application of Western learning in Nigeria.

“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.”