Y Combinator is a startup accelerator that helps young companies get off the ground. It’s a three-month program that provides seed funding and guidance to startups. It has been around since the year 2005. The company is based in Silicon Valley, California. YC has invested in more than 3,000 companies, including 72 African startups (like Flutterwave, Wave and Paystack.)
YC provides the opportunity for startups to get funded and mentored by some of the most successful entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. This can be a great experience for startup founders. As they can learn from their mentors and gain valuable insights from their peers.
15 African startups will be participating in the YC Winter 2022 batch:
Touch and Pay Technologies Limited (Nigeria)
Michael Oluwole, Olamide Afolabi founded Touch and Pay in 2017.
Touch and Pay is a Nigerian startup that aims to revolutionize the way people pay for goods and services in Africa. It was founded on the idea of making digital payments easy, accessible, secure, affordable, scalable, and reliable. The company has been able to achieve this through its technology that allows users to make payments with their mobile phones without having to go through any bank account or credit card details. This technology also allows users to transact online without having to worry about fraudulent transactions or identity theft.
The founders saw that there was an opportunity for a new business model that would bring financial inclusion to people who were previously excluded from the traditional financial industry, such as the unbanked and underbanked.
Topship (Nigeria)
Moses Enewali and Babatunde Junaid founded Topship in 2020.
Topship is a logistics startup that has its headquarters in Lagos, Nigeria. The company was founded with the aim of disrupting the shipping industry with their innovative solutions and services. Topship aims to provide cheap, fast and reliable international shipping services to small businesses, big companies and individuals alike at an affordable price point. They are currently working on developing a new logistics platform that will provide more accurate tracking information for their customers’ shipments.
Remedial Health (Nigeria)
Samuel Okwuada and Victor Benjamin founded Remedial Health in 2020.
Remedial Health is a healthtech company that aims to digitize the pharmaceutical sector in Africa and provide affordable healthcare services to its population. They aim to leverage the use of technology and medicine to address problems that cannot be solved with traditional medicine. The startup covers areas such as telehealth, digital therapeutics, and e-pharmacies. Remedial Health has received $1 million USD from private investors with more investment on the way.
Grey (Nigeria)
Idorenyin Obong and Femi Aghedo founded Grey in 2020.
Grey, formerly Aboki Africa, is a cross-border payments platform that provides foreign accounts for Africans to send and receive international payments. With these foreign accounts, users can henceforth receive their salaries or any other payment from foreign companies or from individuals abroad. They can also hold their savings in foreign currency or convert them to their local currency. Grey currently offers United States Dollar (USD), British Pound (GBP) and Euro (EUR) foreign accounts to customers.
Duplo (Nigeria)
Tunde Akinnuwa and Yele Oyekola founded Duplo in 2021.
Duplo is a Nigerian startup that is focused on bringing financial inclusion to the African market. The company is building a virtual account system that will allow people to move their funds from traditional bank accounts into virtual accounts. As a result, this will help with real-time payments and cashless transactions across the continent. The service provides an alternative to the traditional banking system which has been unable to keep up with the pace of technological changes in the country.
Eazipay Inc. (Nigeria)
Asher Adeniyi, Kingsley Michael, and Efosa Uwoghiren co-founded Eazipay in 2021.
Eazipay is an online tax solutions company that helps small and medium-sized businesses to process their payrolls, pay taxes, and generate invoices, through their APIs solutions. The company’s main target market is the SME market with a focus on the Nigerian market. Especially the companies that up till now process their payrolls and taxes manually with excel sheet, direct debit or through consultants.
Heyfood (Nigeria)
Taiwo Akinropo and Demilade Odetara founded Heyfood in 2021, with the vision of making Nigerians’ lives easier through technology.
Heyfood is a startup that aims to make food ordering and delivery easy in Nigeria. Therefore, the company has set up a system that allows customers to order food from nearby restaurants or grocery stores, pay for it online, and have it delivered at home. Heyfood already has a working app in the market that carries the ambition to become the “Doordash of Africa”.
Frain Technologies (Nigeria)
Emmanuel Aina, Subomi Oluwalana and Ebenezer Emenewe co-founded Frain Technologies in 2021.
Frain Technologies is a Nigerian company that has developed an open source platform to help developers build and deploy webhook infrastructure. The company aims to make it easier for developers to create webhooks for their applications by providing them with APIs that enable them to automate the process of setting up the necessary hooks. The Frain Technologies team also provides training on how to use the platform.
Identitypass (Nigeria)
Niyi Adegboye, David Obi, and Lanre Ogungbe founded Identitypass in 2021.
Identitypass is a digital compliance and security company based in Nigeria. The startup aims to provide cyber security solutions for businesses by providing them with the necessary tools to ensure their compliance with the law. It provides a variety of services including: identity verification, risk assessment, identity assurance and authentication.
Moni (Nigeria)
Femi Iromini and Dapo Sobayo founded Moni in 2021.
Moni is a startup that uses AI to assess the creditworthiness of borrowers and provide them with low-interest loans. Monoi’s loans are available on all platforms, including mobile phones, laptops, tablets and desktops. Moni’s goal is not to replace banks but rather help them perform better at what they do best – lending money.
Dojah (Nigeria)
Tobi Ololade and Ayomide Oso founded Dojah in 2021.
Dojah is a startup that offers identity and verification APIs to authenticate users, verify identities, and build on-demand digital services. The company provides an API that can be used by developers to create the back end for their apps. The API allows users to verify their identity without having to share their personal information with any third party.
Numida (Uganda)
Ben Best, Catherine Denis, and Mina Shahid co-founded Numida in 2016.
Numida is an intech company that offers a proprietary credit model and underwriting workflows to small businesses. The company is based in Uganda and their goal is to create a new market for micro-insurance and micro-credit.
The founders of Numida realized that many small businesses in Uganda were unable to access capital because the traditional methods for underwriting were too costly for them. Numida’s proprietary credit models help lenders understand their risk profile in real-time through detailed analytics and predictive modeling.
Tendo (Ghana)
Derrick Mungai, Evans Darbo Boateng, Felix Manford and Primerose Katena co-founded Tendo in 2020.
Tendo is a Ghanaian-based startup that has developed an app for the African market. They are creating an online marketplace for selling physical items. But with zero upfront inventory – meaning that the seller only pays when they make a sale. The sellers on the platform are able to source products through Tendo and resell items using social commerce tools such as WhatsApp, arrange delivery. Then get paid, all through the Tendo mobile app.
Beu delivery (Ethiopia)
Almas Beleshov, Matvei Vasilev and Hao Zheng co-founded Beu delivery in 2021.
Beu delivery, an on-demand food delivery service, has been making waves in the industry by bringing food to urban consumers through innovative technology. The company aims to make food delivery more affordable and accessible to people living in the developing world. The goal is to provide the same quality service as its competitors, but at 67% cheaper rates.
Boya (Kenya)
Robert Nyangate and Alphas Sinja founded Boya in 2021.
Boya is a startup that provides real-time reporting of corporate card transactions, enabling companies to optimize their spend management. The company is hoping to provide a solution for the issues that businesses currently face with their spend management process. Such as inaccurate reporting and lack of efficiency. The main goal is to make corporate card spending much more efficient for companies by providing them with a better way to track their spendings on the go.
Bloom: (Sudan)
Youcef Oudjidane, Khalid Keenan, Abdigani Diriye, Ahmed A, founded Bloom in 2021.
Bloom the first Sudanese startup backed by YC is a financial technology company that provides innovative, fair, responsible and inclusive financial products that improve the lives of East African consumers.