Storebridger, a new tech startup founded by a former Shopify developer is a rival to old employer as it targets African small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
The idea for Storebridger came when co-founder Hameed Damee helped his wife run a small business and realised how fragmented sales made inventory tracking difficult.
Damee’s background includes roles as a software engineer and Shopify partner, where he supported businesses in optimising their Shopify setup.
The startup, Storebridger, consolidates sales channels, inventory, and credit access into a single platform tailored to African business realities.
Many African SMEs juggle multiple sales channels such as walk-in shops, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, local marketplaces, and web stores. This diversity often leads to inventory mismatches or duplicate sales, as businesses lack a unified view of stock levels.
Storebridger aims to resolve this by centralising all sales channels. Businesses can adopt a store built without coding, use a point-of-sale system for in-person sales, and unify inventory across all channels. The result is real-time updates and fewer order conflicts.
Storebridger’s most striking innovation is its plan to use sales and inventory history as collateral for credit as many SMEs struggle to secure bank loans because financial statements alone may not reflect operational strength.
Storebridger’s integrated platform allows banks to assess creditworthiness based on actual sales performance and inventory data — shifting from intuition-based lending toward data-driven decisions.
Instead of requiring SMEs to submit spreadsheets or audited statements, Storebridger’s system automatically evaluates the business’s performance and exposure to recommend credit limits.
Its embedded banking and POS integration enable seamless reconciliation of payment and sales histories.
Through these roles, he saw first-hand that global tools often failed to address the nuances of the African market — particularly pricing flexibility, payment ecosystems, and operational constraints.
His past roles also include building solutions in banks and fintechs. At one point, as a front-end lead at Sterling Bank, he worked on the bank’s ‘Buy-Now-Pay-Later’ product.
While Storebridger originally attempted to serve all business types, it later narrowed its focus to four verticals: fashion, electronics, restaurants, and supermarkets where demand for integrated sales tools is highest.
Revenue is generated through a transaction fee (2 percent to 4 percent, depending on channel) and value-added service fees (10 percent to 20 percent) for features beyond basic operations.
Source: Business Day
