CardPlanet and ElWafeyat, startups from Kenya and Egypt respectively, have been accepted onto the 4-month 500 Startups accelerator programme in San Francisco, United States (US).
The startups are amongst the 30 companies chosen for the 11th batch of the programme
“As always, our companies have all types of founders from everywhere on the globe,” said 500 Startups. “There are 30 companies in this group, and 37 per cent of our companies have at least one woman on the founding team. Additionally, 57 per cent of our companies have at least one foreign‐born founder.”
CardPlanet, which was incubated at Nailab in Nairobi, powers remittance and digital money services for Africa, and is focused on healthcare remittance, bill pay and other vouchers.
ElWafeyat is an online platform for obituaries and condolences for the Middle East. Starting in Egypt, Elwafeyat will build family trees and map the social graphs for people to instantly announce the death of a family member, reaching a much wider audience than through physical newspapers.
