Tech in Africa
On the 23rd of March, African startups present at Y Combinator’s W21 batch made their pitches in what is the event’s 32nd Demo day, which saw 319 companies make virtual presentations.
Here are the African startups
Djamo (Abijan, Cote d’Ivoire)
Banking solution for French-speaking West Africa – Fintech
Vendease (Lagos, Nigeria)
Africa restaurant B2B marketplace
Flux (Nigeria)
Nigeria crypto remittance startup
Mono (Lagos, Nigeria)
Enables businesses and developers to access customer financial accounts for financial and identity while allowing direct debits.
Sendbox (Lagos, Nigeria)
e-commerce marketplace platform helping small businesses sell directly to customers via social media and other online channels.
Prospa (Nigeria)
A neobank fintech targeting microbusinesses.
NowPay (Cairo, Egypt)
FinTech startup offering a financial wellness platform for employees in the emerging world, particularly in saving, budgeting, spending, and borrowing.
Dayra (Cairo, Egypt)
Fintech banking-as a-service startup
Flextock (Cairo, Egypt)
Warehouse management, B2B, e-commerce platform operating in the MENA region.
Kidato (Nairobi, Kenya)
An online K-12 education platform
Stats on the YC Winter 2021 batch
The event runs live on Zoom where each company had a minute to present at the live event that will run for one day. Selected startups at Y Combinator win $125,000 in seed funding alongside other investment opportunities during the demo day. Thus far, over 47 African startups have gone through the programme, among them Paystack, Flutterwave, WorkPay, and many others.
The virtual showcase on Demo day helps companies scale like crazy. Among the roster are 323 companies, 2,449 investors watching the demo day according to Y Combinator stats.
Geography of companies present
US 50%, Outside US 41 countries (50%)
Founder demographics
Have a woman founder (19%), Woman founder (10%), Black founder (7%), Black founders (5%), Latinx founders (13%), Latinx founder (14%).
To date, Y Combinator has funded over 3,000 startups internationally since 2005. The community boasts over 6000 founders with companies that make a combined valuation of $300 billion, among them Stripe, Doordash, Coinbase, Airbnb, Dropbox, Heroku, and many others.
