Out of the 192 companies in total, here are the five African and African-focused companies that participated in YC’s Summer 2020 Demo Day.
Sakneen (Egypt)
With the moniker “Zillow for Egypt”, Sakneen was founded in 2019 by Ramy Khorshed and Hussein El Kheshen. The startup helps real estate developers and sellers connect directly with potential buyers.
Sakneen wants to reduce challenges like lack of financial transparency, disorganised public information, that makes real estate purchase in Egypt difficult. So far, it has been able to build a database of 80% of Egypt’s new housing supply.
Afriex (US, Nigeria)
Founded in 2019 by Tope Alabi and John Obirije, Afriex helps immigrants send money to their countries.
According to its YC profile, Afriex uses stablecoins to offer remittance services to its customers. Right now, Afriex is processing about $500k per month and is being used in over 30 countries.
MarketForce 360 (Kenya)
Tesh Mbaabu and Mesongo Sibuti founded MarketForce in 2018. The Nairobi-based startup helps FMCG companies manage their field sales activities as well as grow their distribution channels in Africa.
Since launching, MarketForce has raised $500k in seed funding. Also, the startup has 40 paying FMCGs, 50k+ retailers using its platform while processing $250m in transactions to date.
Thndr (Egypt)
Thndr is an investment platform that allows people to invest in stocks, bonds and funds without charging commission. Recently, it received a brokerage license to operate in Egypt and begin offering its users access to The Egyptian Exchange.
The Cairo-based startup was founded by Ahmad Hammouda and Seif Amr.
Ramani (Tanzania, US)
Founded by two brothers, Calvin Usiri and Iain Usiri, Ramani is an application for salespeople to track their inventory, register customers and record sales transactions.
According to its YC profile, the Tanzanian startup was launched this year. So far, it has 5 beta customers transacting with 380 merchants and has recorded $80k worth of sales.
US seed accelerator, Y Combinator (YC) invests $150,000 yearly in selected startups in exchange for 7% equity.
However, starting from next year, the ticket size will reduce to $125k for the same amount of equity.
Usually, these startups spend three months with the San Francisco-based accelerator before finishing off their activities with a Demo Day.
But things have been slightly different this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. While the 197 startups from the Winter batch had participated in some sessions in the Valley, they had to virtually pitch their startups to investors on Demo Day as YC shifted its usual physical gathering event online.
