There are three things you can’t live without: air, water, and yes, your mobile devices. In corporate settings, laptops and smartphones are the lifeblood of business. They’re where work happens, where transactions are executed, and where value is created.
Despite being core to daily operations, device insurance is rarely discussed. In corporate environments where hundreds of devices are deployed, lost, damaged, or stolen with little accountability, device insurance is often lumped with broader business and property insurance. Nigerian startup, Gamp, is building a full device lifecycle management platform for businesses across the continent, covering everything from purchase and leasing to repairs and insurance.
“Devices are the most important assets common to every individual,” says Bolarinwa Omotayo, founder and CEO of Gamp. “Yet there’s no structure that caters to them, especially in Africa.”
Now, after nearly three years in operation, GAMP has over 200 business customers, claims 80–90% retention, and has sold, leased, repaired, or insured roughly 30,000 devices. With a growing portfolio that includes device procurement, rentals, repair logistics, insurance, MDM provisioning, and international delivery, GAMP wants to become the Rippling for Africa’s devices.
But is the company’s “everything-device” ambition feasible in a fragmented, cash-strapped market where trust still resides in “my guy” at Computer Village? And does its bundling strategy translate to moats, or is it just operational sprawl?
GAMP’s founder started out selling refurbished electronics on a Nigerian campus, supplying laptops to some of the country’s earliest YouTubers and social media influencers. After stints at mobility startup MAX and Carrier Devices, Bolarinwa recognised a bigger picture—device ownership in Africa is broken at every level: acquisition, protection, repair, and disposal.
“Businesses have no way to trace where their laptops are. No visibility. And insurance doesn’t cover the things employees actually need, like motherboard replacements or charger failures,” he explains.
GAMP’s answer is GAMP for Business, a lifecycle management platform where businesses can procure laptops, provision software, insure devices, process repairs, track hardware across offices, and manage compliance, all from a single dashboard.
Business model: Hardware-as-a-Service with embedded infrastructure
GAMP’s revenues are spread across four major buckets:
1. Device sales: Businesses can buy new or refurbished laptops outright. GAMP marks up the inventory.
2. Leasing and rental: Lease-to-own options and short-term rentals (₦7,500/day for entry-level models) make devices accessible without large upfront costs.
3. Device protection plan: A recurring subscription (₦18,000–₦100,000/year) covering everything from screen cracks to motherboard failure—even theft.
4. Lifecycle SaaS platform: The GAMP dashboard and embedded logistics give companies visibility into their device fleet. Add-ons include software provisioning (e.g., MDM) and remote locking tools.
“We’re not just selling laptops,” says Bolarinwa. “We’re staying with the business throughout the entire lifecycle. “You buy from us, and we’re there supporting you day and night.”
This retention-centric strategy is deliberate. Unlike a one-off hardware reseller, GAMP wants to turn device ownership into a long-term subscription business.
Moat or maze? The strength of the stack
What makes GAMP formidable—its full-stack control over device lifecycle—is also its biggest operational risk. From sourcing refurbished laptops to managing repair centers in Lagos, Ibadan, and Abuja, to integrating with global vendors like JumpCloud for MDM software, the company is juggling: inventory financing, logistics in high-risk environments, price-sensitive customers, technical repair standards, and international shipping.
Still, the moat is materialising. Its device protection plan is arguably the company’s strongest product hook. By bundling insurance, rentals, and repair into one plan, GAMP turns what would’ve been sunk costs for the customer into a predictable OPEX spend—and gets recurring revenue in return.
Global comparables and African context
GAMP’s global peers include Assurion, a US electronics insurance giant; Grover, a subscription-based device rental company; OFFI, a UK device lifecycle manager recently acquired by Deel, and Rippling, a US HR and IT infrastructure company.
But unlike these markets, African businesses operate in an ecosystem where “my guy at Computer Village” is still the default. This makes GAMP’s competition deeply cultural rather than formal.
“One of our clients refused to buy from us, even though they insure devices with us,” Bolarinwa admits. “They said it would be disloyal to abandon their long-time vendor.”
Moreover, infrastructure is weak: OEM repair networks are unreliable, import duties on electronics are high, and insurance literacy is low. GAMP’s logistics and sourcing pipelines are, by necessity, more complex than those of any Western peer.
Yet the company believes this complexity is defensible. “I would fix a device in this market better than OFFI would,” Bolarinwa claims, citing GAMP’s aggregation of certified repair partners and blacklisted IMEI screening software.
Funding and financing
GAMP raised $650,000 in a 2022 pre-seed round from Future Africa, Ingressive, Sovereign Capital (Kaleo), and angels like Yemi Osindero (Uhuru Capital). It has since added structured debt from FSDH Bank, Meristem and is closing a new financing line with Bass Capital to support device leasing.
The economics works best with scale. GAMP claims it can lease a MacBook for $20/month and insure it for $100/year, amortizing the device cost over 12–48 months depending on condition. With 30,000 devices moved and over 200 business clients and a retention of 80%, the unit model appears tested, even if not yet fully profitable.
But the company faces real supply chain risk: getting cheap credit to procure more inventory at scale. “I got capital at 15% from FSDH, but only a tiny amount,” Bolarinwa says. “I can raise more, but at what cost? How will I price it to my customers?”
What’s next: Land, deepen, dominate
GAMP has no plans to expand just yet. It’s doubling down on Nigeria and its over 200 customers. The company plans to grow its user base 5x, expand its financing partnerships, and roll out its new GAMP for Business platform in Q3 2025.
It’s also walking the fine line between acquisition target and eventual acquirer. “There are three schools of thought,” Bolarinwa says. “Become the Rippling of this market. Get acquired and layered on someone else. Or acquire others ourselves.”
The “Rippling for Africa’s devices” play is bold, and the clearest moat GAMP may have is just how unglamorous the problem it solves is. In a continent obsessed with wallets, commerce, and cloud kitchens, GAMP is betting on hardware-as-a-service, infrastructure tooling, and long-haul retention. That might not be sexy. But it just might scale.
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