Google has announced the new class of startups that have been selected for this year’s Startups Accelerator 2020, which was formerly known as Launchpad.
This year, they will be hosting a combined class with 20 startups instead of 12. Due to the unique nature of 2020 thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Africa Class 5 will be done remotely.
It will run for the usual 3 months with a one week virtual bootcamp per month, beginning 29th June until 11 September 2020.
The selected pool of 20 startups for this new class of Google for Startups Accelerator 2020 are from Kenya, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tunisia & Zimbabwe. These startups are from a different array of industries like logistics, transportation, education, agriculture, e-commerce, media, health and professional services.
Out of the 20 startups selected, 6 are from Kenya. The Kenyan startups selected include:
- AmiTruck which is a digital platform that seeks to bring trust, transparency and efficiency to logistics by using technology to connect cargo owners and transporters
- BuuPass which works with transport operators to seamlessly facilitate convenient and reliable movement of commuters
- Crediation which empowers tech startups to lend to their customers
- Ilara health which brings essential diagnostic support and impactful software products to patients and providers across peri-urban sub-Saharan Africa who currently are unable to access these tools.
- Uzapoint which is an enterprise resource planning tool that enhances the efficiency, profitability and business intelligence of small scale businesses in retail
- Zuka Data Science which is a blended learning platform with engaging data science programs designed by experts to enable individuals and organizations at all levels become data fluent. We have talked about Zuka Academy before last year where the founder, Victor Mutunga told us more about it.
The other startups include:
- Adi+Bolga (Ghana): Adi+Bolga uses technology to provide virtual skincare consultations and accurate personalised product recommendations to consumers.
- Beamm (South Africa): Beamm allows users to make Hollywood style CGI and VFX videos with ease(.
- Credpal (Nigeria): CredPal develops consumer credit infrastructure to ease consumer credit purchase, and enable retail businesses to provide on-demand credit for consumers in Africa.
- Crop2Cash (Nigeria): Crop2Cash is an offline accessible platform for farmers making it possible for them to pay, get paid, access agricultural credit via USSD while assuring financial institutions of their lending capital.
- Curacel(Nigeria): Curacel is a Claims & Fraud Detection Platform for African Insurers.
- Festival Coins (Nigeria): Festival Coins is a suite of tools to help event organizations produce better events, with features including online ticketing, access control, cashless payments, and event reporting.
- Franc (South Africa): Franc.app is a mobile money management platform.
- Judy (Nigeria): The smart, comprehensive database of African case law and legislation.
- Kaoun (Tunisia): Kaoun enables unbanked and underbanked individuals and businesses access to financial services through identification, payment and credit solutions.
- Send (Nigeria): Digital Freight forwarder and customs broker for Africa.
- Stears (Nigeria) : Stears is a trusted provider of high-quality African information that improves decision making.
- The Smarthub (Nigeria): SaaS for hospitals and a Digital hospital with multiple physical locations and more than 200 Doctors with it’s own Ambulance hailing service.
- Thumeza (Zimbabwe): A next-generation logistics platform utilising data in order to optimise the logistics function for enterprises
- Zayride (Ethiopia): Zayride provides reliable, timely, and safe cab services using technologically enabled dispatch systems and integrated mobile money systems for payment.
Since its launch in 2018, Google for Startups Accelerator program has worked with 47 startups from 17 African countries.
