10 Most successful African startups

In Africa, some startups are considered to be among the most successful. These startups offer a solution to various problems in the economy. They are businesses that have attained a certain level of achievement in Africa.

Some startup businesses have fared well, and others have not. In this article, you will learn about the 10 most successful African startups. Continue reading to find out.

10 Most successful African startups

Below are the 10 most successful African startups:

• Flutterwave
• Craydel
• Bypa-ss
• Float
• Jumia
• NFTfi
• Edukoya
• Tendo
• Telda
• Jumo

1. Flutterwave

Iyinoluwa Aboyeji and Olugbenga Agboola formed the young unicorn in 2016, and it is currently based in San Francisco, but it was born in Nigeria.

The company promotes payments and transactions among 33 African nations including Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa. The most recent C Series round, headed by Avenir and Tiger Global, brought the company’s total investment up to $225 million.

African Business claims that it is on track to become the top payment software provider for firms from abroad due to numerous foreign nations seeking to develop into the African continent.

Also read: Flutterwave: History, founders, investors, funding & more

2. Craydel

In March 2021, Manish Sardana, John Nguru, and Shayne Aman Premji founded the tech startup Craydel in Kenya. The firm develops a trustworthy site to assist African students in choosing their tertiary education, courses, and careers.

Craydel offers a digital end-to-end higher education service. From the moment students select schools, programs, and courses until the application and acceptance stages. Additionally, the business offers free visa assistance to people who pursue an international education.

Ninety institutions from Canada, the UK, the US, Ireland, and African nations, including Malawi and Kenya, are already partners with Craydel. There are more than 3,000 courses accessible, divided throughout undergraduate and graduate programs.

3. Bypa-ss

Dr. Andrew Saad founded the company Bypa-ss in Egypt in 2019. The company’s proprietary product, HealthTag, a platform for health information exchange (HIE), entered the market and gave doctors a free cloud-based clinic management solution.

HealthTag securely preserves medical records gathered from various healthcare providers and provides them to their proper owner, the user, by connecting with a cloud database.

Saad stated that as of November last year, the business has more than 17,000 HealthTag cardholders and more than 3,500 healthcare professionals using their product, mainly in clinics, labs, pharmacies, and radiology centers.

4. Float

Float, formerly known as Swipe, was introduced in June 2021 in Ghana as a cash managerial and credit provider financial institution for Africa’s fast-growing companies. It was founded by Jesse Ghansah and Barima Effah.

Several well-known investors worldwide, including Cauris, Tiger Global, Justin Mateen’s JAM Fund, Ingressive Capital, Magic Fund, and other angel investors, recently provided the firm with $17 million in equity and loan capital.

The seed financing is anticipated to hasten the company’s growth even though it is currently functioning in Kenya and Nigeria.

5. Jumia 

The e-commerce giant, Jumia was founded in Lagos, Nigeria, although it now has its corporate headquarters in Dubai and is based in Germany. It claimed unicorn status in 2016 when it raised a $435 million Series C. It was first branded the “Amazon of Africa.”

The business was the first unicorn in the African startup ecosystem’s history, the corporation had a $3 billion valuation and was active in 14 African nations but since its launch, circumstances have evolved. In 2019, Jumia underwent an IPO and debuted on the New York Stock Exchange. The startup now conducts business in 11 nations; its worth dropped to $250 million.

6. NFTfi

NFTfi is a decentralized and peer-to-peer cryptocurrency lending marketplace founded in February 2020 by Stephen Young in South Africa. It allows users to publish their NFT collateral and receive loan offers from other users.

You can use your NFT to request a loan on the platform, at which point other users will offer to lend you money in cryptocurrency with various interest rates and repayment conditions. When you accept an offer, wETH or DAI liquidity will be deposited into your wallet, and your NFT will be placed into a double-audited escrow smart contract for the term of the loan. 

You will receive your NFT if you pay off the loan before it expires. The lender may foreclose and take possession of your NFT if you default.

7. Edukoya

Edukoya is a company founded in May 2021 in Nigeria but launched in December by Honey Ogundeyi, the former head of Google Nigeria. It aims to give students and their parents more control over their education by making it more simple for them to access excellent learning resources and professional assistance.

The platform is designed with secondary school students in Nigeria in mind. To provide effective instruction to its target audience, it has raised a $3.5 million pre-seed capital fund from Target Global and leading African founders such as Shola Akindolu and Babs Ogundeyin, among others.

8. Tendo

Derrick Mungai, Evans Darbo Boateng, Felix Manford, and Primrose Katena established the Tendo in Ghana. It is a social e-commerce platform that lowers startup and ongoing expenses for social commerce business owners by offering them marketing, financing, and logistical support.

Tendo offers its users and resellers a carefully curated selection of goods, marketing resources, and other tools that ease selling. Tendo takes care of the rest after the seller has sold the item at the price they determined, They take care of shipping, deducting the cost, and depositing the profit into the seller’s account.

Anyone may effortlessly open an online store using Tendo with no money down. The business has a distinctive approach to social commerce; It was included in the Y Combinator Winter Batch 2022. This is a pathway to more success.

9. Telda

Youssef Sholqamy, a former engineer at Uber in Egypt, and Ahmed Sabbah, a co-founder of Swvl, launched Telda in April of last year. Telda is a digital bank that offers a free account, to enable customers to send and receive money. They also give cards to use in stores and online for withdrawals and bill payments.

The business revealed in May that it had raised $5 million in pre-seed capital, spearheaded by Sequoia, barely one month after its inception. It also declared that it is the first business to be granted a license by the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) to issue cards and onboard consumers electronically under the new rules.

10. Jumo

Jumo is a mobile financial services platform for banks and mobile network carriers with offices in South Africa and London.  Andrew Watkins-Ball,  CEO of the company employs AI to enable financial services, for companies like eMoney operators, South African banks, and mobile fintech platforms.

So far, it has completed 6 investment rounds, raising about $214.2 million for its growth. Six African countries have it on their market, like—Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, and Ivory Coast. The platform has served over 18 million users in these markets with over $3.5 billion in loans and over 120 million individual loans disbursed.

Conclusion

Africa is becoming a prosperous place for startups. These startups are developing ground-breaking solutions to the issues facing each area of the economy. Additionally, foreign communities and investors are progressively coming to believe in Africa due to these businesses.