Nigerian digital freight forwarding startup, Topship has secured the sum of $2.5 million in a seed round to boost its international shipping. The funds was secured from individual and institutional investors. Also, the company intends to create the easiest way for African businesses to export and import parcels and cargo to their customers, suppliers, and distributors worldwide.
The funding round was led by Flexport and backed by Y Combinator- Soma Capital, Starling Ventures, Olive Tree Capital, Capital X and True Capital. The individual investors in the round include Immad Akhund, Mercury CEO, and Arash Ferdowsi, co-founder of Dropbox.
Topship was founded by Moses Enenwali in 2020 during the COVID-19 following the need to serve the needs of merchants for shipping parcels and cargo outside Nigeria. Also, prior to the launch of the company, Enenwali built relationships with merchants based on his stay at logistics company ACE Logistics and e-commerce fulfilment provider, Sendbox.
Speaking on the funds raised, Enenwali said that Topship allows 1,500 merchants move cargo and parcels from Nigeria to over 150 countries. He added that although the company can help Nigeria merchants receive parcel deliveries from the other way round, they can only accept cargo deliveries from the U.S., the U.K and China.
He also said that the company is exploring other revenue streams, including trade financing and customs clearance charges. The company has recorded a 50% month-on-month revenue growth since getting into YC this January.
“I think what YC does more than anything is just push you to dive as deep as possible in understanding your users,” said the CEO about Topship’s revenue growth after YC”, Enenwali said.
He added, “Looking into the future, a lot of it’s coming from that ethos of the user being the most important piece of the puzzle, and we have to be obsessive about it. We’re taking all the learnings and insights that we’ve learned from our users over the past five months or six months and building it into the product in a merchants-focused way”.
Topship caters to a wide range of users. From a merchant moving tons of heavy equipment and a solo entrepreneur sending parcels to a student mailing documents to a school abroad, and a Gen Z shopping from a foreign store, Topship is a borderline local and international shipping solution between digital freight and e-commerce fulfilment. Flexport has backed several African companies from both categories, such as Trella, Flextock, ShipBlu, Sendbox, and Freeterium.
