Ten African tech startups that took part in the Y Combinator Winter ‘21 batch on the 23rd of March pitched to an audience of investors and other interested parties at a virtual demo day.
The Y Combinator Winter 2021 batch offers that the selected startups will receive US$125,000 in seed funding as well as further investment opportunities at a demo day
In all, 274 companies from 41 countries are represented within this virtual edition of the programme, with 50 percent of them based outside the United States (US) – the most ever.
Ten of the confirmed participants are from Africa, and Disrupt Africa has already reported on five of them. They are Nigeria’s Mono, which helps digital businesses access their customers’ financial and identity data; Ivory Coast’s Djamo, a challenger bank for consumers in French-speaking Africa; Kenya’s Kidato, an online school for K-12 students; and Egyptian startups Dayra, which empowers businesses to offer financial services for unbanked workers and customers via an API, and NowPay, which is building a financial-wellness platform for employees in emerging markets.
Five more African participants can now be confirmed ahead of demo day, four of them from Nigeria. They are VendEase, a marketplace that allows restaurants to buy directly from farms and food manufacturers; Sendbox, an international fulfillment service for African merchants; Prospa, a neobank for micro businesses; and Flux, which provides payment infrastructure for merchants and internet businesses.
The list is completed by Egypt’s Flextock, a tech-enabled fulfillment platform for online merchants in the Middle East and Africa.
YC will host Demo Day live on Zoom. Every company will have one minute to present at this live one-day event.
According to YC 47 African startups have gone through its programme so far – including Flutterwave, Paystack, Cowrywise, Kobo360, MarketForce, Kudi, WaystoCap, WorkPay, Healthlane, Trella, 54gene, CredPal, NALA and Breadfast.