Just recently, we published an article concerning how the proceedings of an event that was dubbed "Africa’s most epic" took a rather disappointing turn. It’s not exactly safe to assume that the opinion forced the organisers to act quickly, but all the same it came as a relief to see SpeedUP Africa come good on its major promise.
In an official press release sent to Techpoint, the organizers of SpeedUP Africa claim that DraperDarkFlow, Toro Orero, and the illustrious investor, Tim Draper, made investments in 8 SpeedUP Africa startups. The lucky startups that got the "undisclosed amount" of investment are; VugaPay, Tress, Swiftly, Planete Sports, VeriCampus, DropBuddies, Nurlux and TrendingshoW.
Not just that, 7 "epic founders" from SpeedUP Africa will be off to Draper University; one of Silicon Valley's elite entrepreneurial and life changing programs. These startups are Jalo, Talentbase, Tress, Loystar, VeriCampus, CamBuy, Go.
However, if you look closely you’d discover that Tress and VeriCampus were named in both categories, and this naturally wouldn’t be so contentious had the organisers not named a staggering list of 24 founders to watch for that also included both startups.
These startups are Sortd (South Africa), Printivo (Nigeria), Mergims (Rwanda), MyMusic (Nigeria), Sokowatch (United states), Maliyo Games (Nigeria). Hotels.ng (Nigeria), Haller Farmer App (UK), CommutaX (South Africa), Tress (Ghana), Spe Taxi Cab (Uganda) Chalkboard Education (France/Ghana), Natromi(UK), Swiftly (Ghana), Veri Campus (Nigeria), TrendingshoW (Uganda), DropBuddies, eCampus (Ghana), VugaPay (Rwanda), Stars From All Nations (Ghana), Loystars (Ghana), AMoney (Cameroon), and NEXTW (Morocco)
Despite all that has been said, there are some positives to be taken from this announcement; especially for SpeedUP Africa’s recognition of young and enterprising startups which are yet to grab a major footing within their respective markets, as opposed to concentrating attention on the big boys (Industry leaders) so to speak. This will no doubt create an opportunity for these startups to level the ground in terms of competitiveness and market relevance.
We did however try to reach out to a few of the founders to balance the entire story, and while none gave us any insight to the exact amount that was invested into their startups (for those who got investment), they all seemed pretty excited about it altogether.
So in a nutshell, it’s a win-win situation. While we'd keep a close eye on these startups, we look forward to the next edition.
