Afrigather Techstars, one in every of Africa’s most energetic startup traders, has unveiled 12 startups in its second cohort for its Lagos-based accelerator programme. The startups will obtain $120,000 in funding.
Techstars, a worldwide accelerator with over 3,000 corporations in its portfolio, has introduced the second cohort of its Africa-focused accelerator programme in partnership with ARM Labs, a Nigerian accelerator. The cohort features a dozen startups working in Ghana, Nigeria, and East Africa and has 4 groups with at the least one feminine co-founder. The chosen startups will obtain $120,000 in funding and $400,000 in money equal internet hosting, accounting and authorized help and different advantages price greater than $5 million.
“The present market dynamics signifies that founders want a mixture of monetary help in addition to technical help and entry to networks with a purpose to construct resilient companies,” Oyin Solebo, managing director, ARM Labs Lagos Techstars Accelerator, stated.
After a record-breaking 2022, with nearly $5 billion raised, Africa’s tech funding celebration fizzled in 2023. Relying on the place you seek the advice of for information, all of them counsel a slowdown in funding for every quarter of this 12 months in comparison with final 12 months. This funding winter meant that traders turned extra conservative and utilized measured investing.
However, a number of traders and funding funds are nonetheless backing startups on the continent. Techstars, which has invested in additional than 70 African startups, is broadening the scope of startups it’s investing in with its second cohort. The primary cohort’s focus was on fintech and proptech startups, however this cohort has chosen startups in fintech, logistics, e-commerce, healthtech, renewable power, and the way forward for work.
“Our second cohort really showcases, and maybe additionally epitomises, the wealth of expertise, innovation and ingenuity that may be discovered inside the African tech ecosystem,” Solebo added.
Along with the funding, the cohort will obtain mentorship periods from notable specialists in Africa’s tech ecosystem, like Tunde Kehinde, the CEO of Lidya; Bode Abifarin, the Chief Working Officer at Flutterwave; Tingting Peng, the Chief Capital and Technique Officer at Moove; Kevin Simmons, a associate at LoftyInc; Lola Esan, a associate at EY; and Yischai Beinisch, the Head for Shell’s West African Rising Market Energy.
These specialists will present the startups with complete steering and specialised providers to help their development journey. The startups will even entry Techstars’ 10,000 founders, alumni, and mentors community.
Meet the chosen startups on this cohort:
- 24Seven: based by Olufemi Idowu, is an asset-light market that allows small companies and comfort shops to order stock on credit score with one-hour doorstep supply.
- Beauty Hut: based by Subuola Oyeleye, is an e-commerce startup that permits customers to buy from their favorite magnificence manufacturers of their e-commerce internet retailer and cellular app.
- Eight Medical: an end-to-end platform that connects customers in have to emergency medical sources (equivalent to hospitals, ambulances, personnel, info, and credit score), lowering ready instances from a mean of three hours to 10 minutes or much less.
- GetEquity: facilitates entry to funding alternatives by SEC-accredited suppliers, lowering entry boundaries by way of funding aggregation throughout varied asset courses.
- JumpnPass: based by Tunde Ademuyiwa and Qudus Quadry, is a cellular self-checkout platform that permits consumers to make use of their smartphones to scan product barcodes, pay for gadgets, and skip lengthy queues
- One Plan: helps employees in Africa’s casual economic system create reasonably priced monetary plans, making it simpler to start out a retirement plan, entry low-interest credit score, and entry well being and life insurance coverage protection.
- PBR Life Sciences: based by Ayodeji Alaran, presents pharmaceutical, shopper healthcare, and medical machine corporations quick and quick access to high-quality market information and insights, serving to them make goal selections on product pricing, volumes, and firm technique.
- PressOne Africa: gives African companies with deeper insights into cellphone conversations with clients by way of a communication platform that gives dialog intelligence and name monitoring.
- Rana: based by Abraham Mohammed and Mubarak Popoola, democratises entry to wash and dependable photo voltaic techniques for SMEs and residential clients by way of reasonably priced long-term photo voltaic subscriptions, changing the necessity for costly, unreliable, and poisonous backup turbines.
- Surge Africa: based by Kumar Shourav and Ebrahim Essop, permits African people, micro-entrepreneurs and MSMEs to make on the spot cross-border transfers and pay as much as 80% much less in charges.
- Swoove: empowers logistics corporations in rising markets to digitise and scale their companies with dispatch automation, fleet administration, monitoring, telematics, and a large supply community.
- Veend: based by Olufemi Olanipekun and Ebenezer Ajayi, permits people and companies with verifiable revenue to entry funds on-demand, addressing their wants for emergency funds or working capital
This system will conclude with an invite-only Demo Day on February twenty second, 2024, the place founders will showcase their progress.
