The 3 Ghanaian startups joining us at the Y Combinator Lagos Meetup
A few weeks ago, YC alums Tress, OMG Digital, and Paystack joined forces to make it possible for 3 Ghanaian startups to attend the Y Combinator Lagos Meetup.
We enjoyed reviewing over 80 high quality Ghanaian startups for the opportunity, and we’re excited to announce the three teams who’ll be getting free flights and hotel rooms for the weekend to join us for the event!
1. Anitrack
Anitrack is a livestock management system that identifies livestock and tracks their health using RFID and other wearable technology.
What’s the opportunity the Anitrack team is going after?
“Livestock farming feeds the majority of African, and employs over 80% of the agriculture population in Africa according to the World Bank. Despite this, there’re surprisingly few efforts geared towards ensuring that livestock farming is as efficient and as profitable as possible. Farmers end up losing their animals due to cattle theft as well as diseases.
Anitrack seeks to help mitigate these losses through technology that helps farmers better track the movement of their livestock, and also passively monitor them for health issues. This was increase yield, create wealth, and put Africa on the map for beef exports and cattle farming.”
What successes are you especially proud of?
“Anitrack has signed on Farmable.me to provide the 7,500 livestock on their platform with Anitrack monitoring devices. We’ve done a trial run of about 100 cattle, and are looking forward to tagging the remaining cattle.”
What kinds of people are you hoping to meet at the YC Lagos Meetup? What’re you hoping to take away from the experience?
“We hope to meet domain experts in agritech, Internet of Things, and making a product for a market that’s not necessarily tech savvy. We also hope to learn more about how to put together a winning YC pitch.”
2. Dext Technology
Dext Technology has created a science laboratory that is small enough to fit in the bag of a student, and affordable enough — 50 cedis (~$11) — to make it accessible. They aim to give every student in African a personal science lab and introduce them to hands-on science.
Their Science Set help primary level students perform basic science experiments involving electromagnetism, electrical circuits, and more. The set contains 45+ components and can be used to perform over 26 experiments found within the curriculum of schools in Ghana and Africa.
What’s the opportunity the Dext Technology team is going after?
“The World Bank estimates that there are over 150 million primary and secondary school students in Africa. Our product, the science set is design to meet both the academic and recreational demands of these students. We envision the science set becoming ubiquitous learning tool in the 10 billion dollar educational material market.”
What successes are you especially proud of?
“The success we’re most proud of is the over 1,500 students and teachers across Ghana who are experiencing science differently because of our Science Set. Additionally, we were excited to win the American Society of Mechanical Engineers 2017 Innovation Show, and to received an Engineering Excellence award from the Ghana Institute of Engineers.”
What kinds of people are you hoping to meet at the YC Lagos Meetup? What’re you hoping to take away from the experience?
“We hope to meet fellow startup founders and hear their stories; failures and successes. We hope to take away valuable insights into issues like funding and customer acquisition and how to generally succeed in as a startup.”
3. Joluud
Facility managers have a hard time tracking maintenance operations and cost.
Joluud is building a platform for managers of complex facilities to track and see where they spend their time, effort, and money.
What’s the opportunity the Joluud team is going after?
“Every day, more serviced apartments, planned communities, hotels, office spaces, hostels, spring up across Africa. Facility managers of these spaces currently universally use Excel sheets and paper to manage the ever growing maintenance and upgrade requests of their clients. We believe that that there’s a big opportunity to provide a platform that helps both facility managers and their clients have visibility into the needs of the physical infrastructures they manage and occupy.”
What successes are you especially proud of?
“We’re proud of the fact that we developed a working prototype and signed up five companies in less than a month with less than $500 dollars.”
What kinds of people are you hoping to meet at the YC Lagos Meetup? What’re you hoping to take away from the experience?
“We hope to meet people who have experience building B2B (business-to-business) software companies here in Africa, and have found a way to make them viable. We’d also like to learn how to craft a great YC application.”
