Seven African startups got selected by Techstars Toronto this year amongst over 500 other early-stage startups for funding and Mentorship as they graduated from the program in the 2022 batch.
The accelerator program provides funds amounting to $120,000, Mentorship, and access to the experienced founders of Techstars.
Recently, they launched a cohort program in which different startups were selected for the Techstars Toronto accelerator spring cohort program, 7 of them ranging from Africa, Asia, and North America graduated.
The startups that graduated were provided with $120,000 funding ($100,000 convertible note and $20,000 stipend) to advance their project, Mentorship from top professionals in their various industries, and access to the experienced founders of Techstars.
Note: Convertible note is a debt not paid in monetary form but by granting the lender shares equivalent to the amount borrowed.
According to Startup owners interviewed, they were glad at the opportunity Techstars gave them. They also commented that this acceptance allows them to bounce ideas off the accelerator’s wide network of mentors and founders.
They also said that Techstars had aided them in understanding the problem, which they are alleviating and immensely improving their business models.
Here are the 7 African startups that were selected from Techstars Toronto’s spring 2022:
EMERGENCY RESPONSE AFRICA (ERA)
This startup was created in 2019 by citizens of different countries, namely Maame Pooku (Ghana) and Folake Owodunmi (Nigeria). The startup was founded when Pooku lost a family member due to the slow response of emergency services, and Folake almost lost a child due to the same issue of slow medical response.
These incidences prompted them to establish “ERA”, which is intended to provide quick medical services to Africans.
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After the incident, both founders realized that slow medical response from healthcare personnel is a huge problem in Africa’s health sector, and they created ERA, which started operations in 2021.
In an interview with TechCabal, she said:“Knowing that so many people lose their lives needlessly in that journey to get healthcare with so many delays, I wanted to find out how we could improve that process and, ultimately, save lives.
And this was an opportunity to use technology to solve a big problem I saw.
At its simplest level, the problem that we are solving is the lack of access to fast, reliable emergency medical care- but there are a lot of factors that contribute to that problem existing in the first place.
One Of those factors is simply a shortage of supply in terms of the ambulance and first responders. But perhaps more importantly, the bigger issue is a lack of centralized communication and dispatch.” She
added.
Emergency Response Africa (ERC) can identify and connect with many first responders and hospitals on its technology platform, enabling them to alert them once an emergency arises and making it possible for quick response.
After graduating from Techstars, Owodunmi commented that Techstars had aided them greatly in improving their business model and tips on improving their efficiency, speed, and the quality of responses from its network of first responders. She also added that even though ERA is only available in Nigeria presently, there are plans to expand it across W/Africa over the next 3 years.
This is a startup that provides lenders with the necessary data which aid them in making smart credit decisions to help small, nano, and micro-businesses access credit.
Two Nigerians founded it: Muyiwa Faulkner and Azeez Oluwafemi 2020, with over 2 decades of experience in the banking and finance sector.
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Faulkner in an interview said that she had noticed that in the banking and finance sector, most – small and micro businesses have been neglected, and their startup is bent on fixing that. She added that they only operate in Nigeria presently but plan to expand to Uganda, Ghana, and Tanzania in the next 12 months.
MYCOVERAI
MycoverAI was founded in 2021 by Adebowale Banjo, Fred Ebho, and Alexander Igwe Ifendu. It is an African startup focusing on building digital insurance, which African businesses can embed into their products.
In an interview, he said: “We’ve built this API that allows other businesses to embed insurance into their offering. To make insurance distribution easy, we are leveraging two pillars: product innovation and diffusion. For product innovation, we are working with insurance companies to create insurance products that are very interesting and attractive to the end-users.
Then the second leg is to find businesses that embed their products and services. For the third leg. We are building an infrastructure that makes the claims process easier for the insurance companies and the users.
We have created this retail health insurance product called FlexiCare, which goes for 1,600 nairas monthly and gives people up to 1,000,000 naira’s worth of benefits and access to primary care, secondary care, surgeries, and eye care.
We also discovered that this product is unique and robust. About 3,000 of our current users are first-time purchasers of insurance products.
The startup, Mycoverai, is currently only operational in Nigeria but plans to spread to other African countries, including Rwanda and Kenya, in the coming years.
BONGALOW
This African startup was founded by Kelechi Nwokocha, Abdulrahman Atta, and Samuel Haruna in 2021.
It is designed to provide a digitized mortgage structure that banks and real estate brokers can apply to their products to offer mortgage solutions to their customers. The company is US-incorporated but focuses on the African banking and finance sector.
truQ
Founded in 2019 by Williams Fatayo and Foluso Ojo, it is a startup that automates and optimizes short-haul organizations across Africa. They can perform their functions by connecting B2B eCommerce merchants to the closest vehicle, which can be tracked and trusted.
GLADE
They allow African businesses to have multi-currency bank accounts, enabling them to make payments in various currencies. It was founded by Liyi Victor and Temitope Hundeyin in 2020. Glade focuses on helping African businesses to alleviate problems attached to multi-currency transactions, namely: high costs of exchange rates, bad experiences, lack of transparency in transactions, and outline decline of access.
GIGMILE
They were founded in 2022 by Kayode Adeyinka and Samuel Esiri. The startup focuses only on aiding Africa to engage fully in the gig economy. They provide services such as Providing vehicles and smartphones to potential gig workers, providing them with the necessary training they need, and giving them loans.
The 6th cohort of Techstars Toronto has lived up to its reputation by helping these startups listed above in aiding their various projects, which would benefit Africa and the world in general.
Sunil says, “It is another remarkable class of Canadian and international startups, and they are all raising money and growing fast with the strong founders, most of whom are in Toronto”.