3 Nigerian Startups Join Y Combinator W23 Batch, Banking $500k
Three Nigerian entrepreneurs have been confirmed as participants in the famed Silicon Valley incubator Y Combinator’s W23 class. In addition to other advantages, they will get US$500,000 in funding.
The W23 batch of the Y Combinator program, which helped launch businesses like Airbnb, Coinbase, and Dropbox among others, is presently in session and will come to a close in March with a demo day.
In September, Disrupt Africa reported that the accelerator had raised the threshold for a deal to US$500,000. YC formerly contributed US$125,000 for 7% equity, but as part of its new standard contract, it also contributes US$375,000 on an uncapped SAFE with “Most Favoured Nation” (MFN) terms.
Three startups, all of which are from Nigeria, are from Africa out of the first 85 startups for its W23 batch. They are Shekel Mobility, a streamlined finance and operations platform for auto-dealers, Waza, a B2B payments infrastructure that offers the rails for international payments and intra-African trade, and Bujeti, an end-to-end cost management and budgeting platform.
Over the upcoming months, more startups will be revealed, with more African businesses expected to be among them. Seven African startups participated in the accelerator’s most recent batch, S22, however it was the previous batch, W22, which featured the greatest number of African startups ever, with 24 participating.
Alumni from Y Combinator include European royalty including Flutterwave, Paystack, and Kobo360 (not to mention Cowrywise, MarketForce, Kudi, WaystoCap, WorkPay, Healthlane, Trella, 54gene, CredPal, NALA and Breadfast).
The accelerator holds a murky place in the continent’s startup environment, but entrepreneurs praise it for the beneficial effects it has had on their companies.
