Sqoop is a tool designed for efficiently transferring bulk data between Apache Hadoop and structured datastores such as relational databases. It enables the import and export of data between Hadoop and external databases, leveraging parallel processing to handle large volumes of data efficiently. Sqoop supports various databases and can be used to import data into HDFS, Hive, or HBase, and export processed data back to relational databases. This facilitates seamless data integration and helps in building robust data pipelines.