Ethiopia’s beU Delivery and Nigeria’s IdentityPass are among the 40 startups so far confirmed as participants in the W22 batch of the renowned Silicon Valley-based Y Combinator accelerator.
The W22 batch of the Y Combinator programme, which played a role in the early days of companies like Airbnb, Coinbase and Dropbox among others, takes place between now and March.
Participants receive US$125,000 each in seed funding as well as further investment opportunities at a demo day. The S21 edition of the accelerator had 15 African participants, the most yet, and with 40 companies confirmed so far for W22 there are two African companies already named. We are expecting more to be revealed over the next few months, both before and after demo day.
The two startups named so far are beU Delivery, an Ethiopian on-demand food delivery service, and Nigerian digital compliance and security company Identitypass. Disrupt Africa reported in November the latter had raised US$360,000 in pre-seed funding to help it acquire more customers, further develop its product and expand its team.
Y Combinator is perhaps the world’s most famous accelerator, and is increasingly selecting African tech startups to take part in its programme. Its alumni features continental royalty such as Flutterwave, Paystack and Kobo360 (not to mention Cowrywise, MarketForce, Kudi, WaystoCap, WorkPay, Healthlane, Trella, 54gene, CredPal, NALA and Breadfast).
The accelerator occupies an ambiguous position within the continent’s startup ecosystem, but is lauded by entrepreneurs for the positive impact it has on their businesses.
