Five more African startups have been confirmed as participants in the W22 batch of the renowned Silicon Valley-based Y Combinator accelerator, taking the total to 15 so far.
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, is currently taking place, and concludes with a demo day in March.
Participants receive 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 Disrupt Africa reported recently on the first 10 confirmed African participants in the W22 batch.
With over 230 companies now confirmed as taking part, a further five African names have made the list, taking the total so far announced to 15, equalling the number of African participants in S21. We are expecting more W22 participants to be revealed over the next few months, both before and after demo day.
Four of the five startups added to the list hail from Nigeria, which accounts for 11 of the 15 African participants so far. They are pharma-focused health startup Remedial Health; fintech startup Duplo, which works to digitise payment flows for B2B companies; Grey, formerly Aboki Africa, which provides foreign currency accounts for Africans; and Heyfood, which makes it easy for restaurants to run their food ordering and delivery business.
The fifth company is Kenyan, namely Boya, which enables businesses to instantly issue corporate cards to employees and provides them with software that gives them control and visibility on all spending in real-time.
Y Combinator’s 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).
Disrupt Africa reported recently the accelerator had increased its standard deal size to US$500,000. Until now, YC invested US$125,000 for seven per cent equity, but under its new standard deal it will now also invest an additional US$375,000 on an uncapped SAFE with “Most Favoured Nation” (MFN) terms.
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.
