Klump, founded five years ago to let Nigerians purchase goods and services in instalments through the model often called Buy Now, Pay Later, has made the painful decision to shut down operations.
In an emotion-laden post by the co-founders, Celestine Omin and Olufunbi Falayi, the duo said the decision was made with “heavy hearts”, outlining some of the constraints that have forced them to close, including lengthy integration timelines, sector restrictions and limits on loan sizes.
“Today, with heavy hearts, we are announcing that Klump is shutting down. We are proud of what we built. Few things are as fulfilling as watching people use a product that once existed only in your imagination,” they said.
The founders, who raised a total of $1.2 million and built partnerships with e-commerce platforms including Jumia and Konga, deserve accolades for not just envisioning an idea, but working towards solving a problem faced by many Nigerians, particularly working-class Nigerians who would love to acquire products but do not have the funds to pay outright.
Hence, rather than a gloomy headline announcing that another startup has failed in Africa’s most populous country, TechMedia Africa, in our mission to celebrate innovators, tell the stories of builders and explore the impact of technology, is profiling the incredible minds behind Klump.
Celestine Omin’s journey through the systems powering Nigerian commerce
Long before Omin helped Nigerians spread payments across instalments, he was building software to make everyday work easier.
After studying Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science at the University of Calabar, he worked as a technical support engineer at LexFori Partners in Calabar. There, his responsibilities extended beyond maintaining computers and networks. He designed an internal case management system that helped a law office organise case diaries, internal communications and tasks.
It was an early example of a thread running through his career: understanding how people worked, identifying the friction, and building something useful around it.
That approach would take him into Nigeria’s emerging e-commerce industry. His experience included managing the development of an electronic coupon system at DealDey and helping its engineering team expand the infrastructure supporting the business.
- At Konga, which he joined in June 2012, the problems he helped solve grew in scale and variety. His work touched customer analytics, shipment management, delivery tracking and the online storefronts through which merchants reached buyers.
According to his LinkedIn profile, he personally developed more than 70 online stores for the first version of Konga’s marketplace while working as a technology associate. Behind each storefront was the practical work of giving a seller somewhere to display products and receive orders.
As he progressed through the ranks, he went on to lead engineering efforts on SellerHQ, Konga’s seller platform. Among the achievements listed on his profile is an internally built replacement for marketplace software Mirakl, a project he says saved £200,000 in licensing fees and took eight months to complete.
The significance went beyond the savings. Building such a system required translating the needs of a retail business and its merchants into software that people could use every day.
As Konga’s infrastructure evolved, Omin also worked on its transition from a single large application to smaller, separately managed services, taking responsibility for systems supporting orders and customer service. His experience was accumulating around the machinery of online commerce: how products were listed, how orders moved and how customers were served.
Alongside that work, he helped others develop their technical skills. As a convener of GitHub meetups in Africa, he organised opportunities for developers to learn, exchange ideas and improve how they built software together.
His subsequent role at Andela, which he held from September 2016 to October 2018, brought further experience relevant to Klump. As a senior technical consultant, he led engineers working on a credit-scoring system for emerging markets, while also helping with Andela’s launch in Uganda.
- A six-month stint as an engineering manager at Nigerian payments company Paystack, followed by three years as chief technology officer at Alta Labs, added payments experience and engineering leadership to a career already rooted in commerce.
By the time Klump began in 2021, Omin had worked across several of the systems that an instalment payment business would need to bring together. His contribution drew on years spent building the infrastructure behind a customer’s seemingly simple decision to click “buy”.
Alongside him was a co-founder whose journey had centred on helping ideas become businesses.
Olufunbi Falayi’s journey from backing founders to building Klump
For Falayi, entrepreneurship had long involved creating opportunities for other people to build.
A graduate of Computer Science and Economics from Obafemi Awolowo University, he brought an academic foundation spanning technology and the economic decisions surrounding it.
- His early work included a project role in the corporate social responsibility department of Mit-Glauben Engineering. He also helped establish Southern Business Academy in Lagos and co-founded Project 4, an education nonprofit, extending his work into training and access to learning.
That interest in helping people develop their capabilities became particularly visible through Passion Incubator, which he co-founded to support early-stage technology entrepreneurs.
In his own account of its beginnings, Falayi described an organisation focused on helping founders test ideas and refine business models. Its first accelerator programme launched in April 2014, selecting six startups after reviewing more than 110 applications.
Those businesses worked on problems ranging from medicine distribution and traffic navigation to audiobooks and online retail. Supporting them meant engaging with the uncertain, practical stages between having an idea and finding customers willing to use it.
- Falayi carried that experience into iDEA Nigeria, the government-backed technology incubator he joined in 2015. His responsibilities included leading support for early-stage startups and strengthening engagement with the wider technology community.
His work also attracted recognition through the LEAP Africa Social Innovators Programme and the Islamic Development Bank Group’s business plan competition. Advisory and speaking engagements at the Harvard Business School African Business Conference and South by Southwest in 2015 placed him in wider conversations about entrepreneurship and innovation.
Across those experiences, a consistent interest emerges: helping people turn ambition into something that could operate, serve customers and grow.
- At Klump, that work took a more direct form. Falayi became co-founder, chief operating officer and chief product officer, bringing his experience supporting businesses into the daily task of building one alongside Omin.
Together, they pursued a service that required both a working product and cooperation between merchants, customers and financial institutions. Klump’s launch in 2022, backed by a $780,000 pre-seed round led by Seedcamp, gave that ambition an early platform. Its initial offering allowed customers to receive purchases immediately and pay across four instalments.
Closing a company, carrying the lessons forward
Keeping that ambition alive required adjustments along the way. When the founders could not secure the debt funding needed to expand their own lending, they changed direction, connecting customers with banks and other lenders at checkout.
That shift offered a way forward, but it also tied Klump’s progress to its partners’ integration timelines, lending limits and willingness to finance particular purchases. The founders continued working through those constraints, learning how much a financial technology business depends on the institutions surrounding it.
In their farewell, they reflected on the demands of scale: reaching enough customers required dependable distribution, while growing at their intended pace required greater control over lending capital and credit decisions.
“We had ambitious plans to scale quickly, but our momentum was always tied to how fast our lending partners moved. To move at the speed we wanted, we needed our own capital and our own loan book. That never materialised,” they wrote.
Omin and Falayi have not announced what comes next. What they carry forward, however, includes the experience of turning an idea into a product, bringing partners together, and perhaps more importanly, being masters of their own fate.
“The takeaway: be the master of your own fate, and control whatever gives you your greatest advantage,” they admonished.