A Look at the Latest W23 African Startups Batch Accepted into Y-Combinator – All Nigerian

Three Nigerian startups are the latest to be accepted to the prestigious accelerator program, Y-Combinator. The 3 are part of the initial 85 startups that will be joining the W23 batch.

Here are the startups:

1.) Waza


Waza is a B2B payments infrastructure that provides the rails for global payments and intra-Africa trade.

“We make it more affordable & seamless for African businesses to fulfil their global payment obligations, treasury, and liquidity needs through our APIs and web platform. Think SWIFT for African businesses.”

Founded in 2022, the YC – backed startup has a team of 6, including co-founders, Emmanuel Igbodudu and Maxwell Obi.

2.) Shekel Mobility


Shekel Mobility is described as a simplified financing & operating system for car dealers in Africa, founded by Benjamen, Sanmi and Valentine.

With Shekel, Auto dealers can digitize their financial operations and get instant access to credit and resources needed to grow a sustainable business.

“Auto dealers are the most critical stakeholders in the automobile value chain. Yet, they have been neglected up until now and we are here to change that,” says CEO and Co-Founder, Sanmi Olukanmi.

The startup launched operations in January 2022 and has since grown to power $19M+ worth of transactions with over 1,000 dealers in their ecosystem. This has seen, not just the Ycombinator nod, but they have also recently raised $1,950,000 in a pre – seed round led by Ventures Fund.

3.) Bujeti


Bujeti offers an expense management platform dedicated to helping businesses of all sizes streamline their expense management processes and take control of their finances.

The platform allows for easy tracking and reporting of expenses, automatic reconciliation, and seamless integration with accounting software.

About YCombinator

Ycombinator is one of the most attractive fellowship and accelerator programs for teams that are building in technology with the program having 7 startups in the previous batch, S22.

While three startups are now confirmed from Africa, more are expected to be announced over the coming months. The accelerator also invests a total of $500, 000 in accepted startups.

African startups that have been backed by YC have gone on to raise $1.5 more billion, with the inclusion of:

• Flutterwave
• Paystack
• Kobo360
• Cowrywise
• MarketForce
• Kudi
• WaystoCap
• WorkPay
• Healthlane
• Trella
• 54Gene
• CredPal
• NALA
• Breadfast