Nadya Eka Lestari
TechInAfrica — Egyptian fintech startup Dayra has brought home a $15,000 equity-free grant from Y Combinator’s Startup School. Dayra is one of the grant winners announced by Y Combinator last month. This winning made Dayra the only African startup to win the grant.
Founded in early 2019 by Hesham Ghandour, Mohammed Ennabah, and Abdelrahman Rizq, Dayra is an app that is used to send money from your bank account to anyone in Egypt with a phone number. This Cairo-based fintech platform allows users to instantly transfer money in less than 20 seconds to any bank account in Egypt.
The app also gives users the leverage to operate several bank accounts on the platform. Dayra generates money by charging a nominal fee less than the usual bank charges for interbank transfers.
Established by Y Combinator, Startup School is a free online course for founders actively pursuing their own startup. Throughout the school curriculum, Y Combinator aims to accomplish the following:
- Encourage and inspire people to consider starting a company as a way to positively impact the world.
- Teach people how to start a startup, and equip them with the resources and tools to help prepare them now and in the future.
- Build a community of entrepreneurs who can encourage, teach and support one another.
The program is free and available to anyone but at the end of it, Y Combinator selects some startups that completed the online course to reward them with a grant. In 2018, the grant was $10,000 meanwhile as much as $15,000 was rolled out in 2019.
In the 2019 edition, over 40,000 founders participated in the program and a little more than 10,000 graduated from it.
Regarding the winning of the grant, Hesham stated, “The YC grant is nice of course. It’s not about the money though. The amount is too small to make a huge difference. But it has given us a nice boost of confidence. The most important thing, however, is that users really want what we are building. That remains our biggest motivation.”
He also added that the company will continue to focus on improving the user experience of its app. Dayra will start fundraising to support its growth plans immediately.
Source: techgistafrica.com
