DRC’s VaultPay and Nigeria’s Chow Central have joined Rwanda’s Eden Care in being selected for the S23 batch of the renowned Silicon Valley-based Y Combinator accelerator.
Disrupt Africa reported last month Rwandan insurtech startup Eden Care, which offers affordable, accessible and personalised health coverage to businesses and their employees, was the only African company far confirmed as a participant in the S23 batch of Y Combinator, which played a role in the early days of companies like Airbnb, Coinbase and Dropbox, among others.
It has now been joined by the DRC-based VaultPay, which enables telcos to directly distribute banking services, and the Nigeria-based Chow Central, a virtual restaurant chain for the middle class population in African cities.
The two new confirmed African participants means three of the 198 so far confirmed for the S23 batch are from Africa, a far cry from the W22 batch, when 24 startups from the continent took part. The number of African startups taking part in Y Combinator has steeply declined since, there were only seven in S22, and three in W23.
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). It occupies an ambiguous position within Africa’s startup ecosystem, but is lauded by entrepreneurs for the positive impact it has on their businesses.
Disrupt Africa reported last year the accelerator had increased its standard deal size to US$500,000. Until then, Y Combinator 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.
