Y Combinator has announced the startups to participate in this year’s edition of its winter programme. This year 10 out of 156 startups participating will be representing Africa. Of the 10 startups, 7 are from Nigeria while Uganda, Ethiopia and Ghana each have a startup representing them.
Y Combinator is an American startup accelerator founded in 2005 to facilitate the growth of more startups around the world. The company has played a pivotal role in the growth of popular African startups like Flutterwave, and Paystack.
For the startups selected for this cohort, stakes are higher this year as the accelerator has increased the amount it invests in startups from $125k to $500k. And these companies will be the first to benefit. This article takes a closer look at them.
BeU Delivery
This is an on-demand food delivery service based out of Ethiopia with ambitions to become an African super app. Founded in 2021 by Russian entrepreneurs with startup experience in the African market, it has already grown to become the 2nd biggest market share in food delivery in Ethiopia.
Topship
The company which could best be described as the Flexport for Africa is looking to revolutionize the billion-dollar African shipping and logistics industry which is plagued by several ills. Founded in 2018 by Moses Enenwali, as a one-man operation on Instagram, it has grown to a team of over 10 that provides technology for international delivery of freight, cargo, and parcels.
Numida
A rapidly growing digital financial institution based out of Kampala, Uganda. Designed to provide unsecured, growth and working capital to micro and small businesses based on a proprietary credit score. Founded in 2017 by Mina Shahid, Ben Best and Catherine Dennis, the company is the first startup from Uganda to get into Y combinator.
Moni
One of the main problems facing the nascent but booming agency banking (POS agents) market is liquidity. Because the majority of POS transactions are withdrawals, agents need to have a steady supply of cash on hand and many of them don’t. Moni Africa is an attempt by Femi Iromini to solve this problem by providing loans of up to 3 million for POS Agents. The company is a neobank building a communal financial system driven by mutual trust. New agents are only added to the system on the recommendation of existing agents. The community is responsible for keeping each agent accountable and ensuring loan default rates are kept at the barest minimum.
Tendo
From a broke student looking to earn some extra change to enjoy the Accra nightlife to the underpaid civil servant trying to make ends meet, Tendo provides a solution by helping you start a business without any type of investment on your part. The company which was founded in 2020 by Derrick Mungai, Evans Darbo Boateng, Felix Manford & Primerose Katena, enables anyone in Africa to start an online shop with zero capital. It connects wholesalers with drop shippers and provides other business necessities like payments, storage and delivery.
Dojah
A KYC (Know Your Customer) and digital onboarding solutions company. It provides a system for digital identification and verification in order to aid the seamless authentication of data. Founded in 2021 by Tobi Ololade and Ayomide Oso, the Lagos based startup has the goal of empowering scale and innovation for businesses in Africa.
Touch and Pay Technologies
If you’ve used the BRT buses in Lagos recently, then you probably have used one of the products of Touch and Pay Technologies. Founded in 2017 by Olamide Afolabi and Michael Oluwole with the goal to hasten the emergence of a future cashless society in Nigeria by encouraging the use of electronic systems for payment for goods and services.
Frain Technologies
Frain Technologies is building webhook infrastructure for African developers. Its flagship product is Convoy, an open-source, cloud-native webhook service. The company was founded in February 2012 by Emmanuel Aina and Subomi Oluwalana.
IdentityPass
Every day, the losses incurred by businesses and individuals from fraud continues to grow. IdentityPass helps to solve this problem by providing compliance and data security infrastructure to help businesses verify transactions and confirm users’ identities within seconds. The company was founded in 2021 by David Obi, Lanre Ogungbe and Niyi Adegboye.
Eazipay
Trying to scale the several hurdles that come with paying salaries at the end of the month from taxes to health insurance can be a herculean task. Eazipay which was founded in 2021 by Efosa Uwoghiren, Michael Kingsley and Asher Adeniyi helps to solve this problem by building payroll and bookkeeping solutions for African startups and small and medium scale enterprises.
