Nigerian Fintech startup, Mono, founded in August 2020, has been accepted to participate in the Winter 2021 batch of popular Silicon Valley-based accelerator, Y Combinator.
Mono, courtesy of the selection, banks a US$125,000 funding and stands to benefit further support from the accelerator.
Who are they: The 8 month old startup is a fintech player helping digital businesses in Africa access their customers’ financial and identity data.
What they do: Industry reviews revealed that Mono’s technology platform gives customers like Flutterwave, Carbon and Indicina an access to a broad range of high-quality financial data from African institutions through a single API.
Speaking to press, founder and CEO of Mono, Abdul-Hassan, explained that their API enabled businesses and developers to build applications that connects with their user’s financial account.
He said: “Mono is the API for financial accounts. Our API enables businesses and developers to build applications that connect with their users’ financial accounts in a manner that is many more times reliable, predictable, performant, and fair than anything else available.”
Why this matters:
The news comes on the heels of a recent $500,000 pre-seed investment from Lateral Capital, Ventures Platform, Golden Palm, Rally cap, Idris Ayo Bello, Olumide Soyombo, and other strategic investors.
In the accelerator, Mono is the only African startup participating in the Y Combinator (YC) winter 2021 programme, hence solely representing Africa amongst 35 other startups participating in the American tech development programme.
During the virtual demo day slated for the 23rd of March, Mono will present a 1min pitch to a virtual room of investors for further investment opportunities.
ALSO READ: 5 striking things about Joe Biden’s newly appointed Nigerian-born Enoh Ebong
The stake
YC will invest $125,000 in Mono for 7% equity, and will expose the startup to a global network of founders, investors, and customers.
Analysts speculates that a seed round after the three month programme (if closed) will give the company a significantly higher valuation, a development that could increase investor’s expected long-term returns.
What you should know:
- Y Combinator invests $125,000 in a large number of startups twice a year.
- The YC program takes 3 months, with the first batch starting from January through March and the second from June through August.
- Since 2005, YC has funded over 3000 startups currently valued at over $300 billion including Airbnb and Door dash.
- Mono was founded by AbdulHamid Hassan (former product manager at Paystack) and Prakhar Singh.
- A month after launch, Mono raised US$500,000 in pre-seed funding from a handful of angel investors and VCs.
- Mono becomes a part of about 22 Nigerian startups like Paystack, BuyCoins, 54Gene, and Kobo360 who have participated in previous batches of YC’s famed programme.
READ NOW: 5 striking things about Joe Biden’s newly appointed Nigerian-born Enoh Ebong
Add Comment