Nigeria’s agritech start-up makes YC 2019 winter batch

Thrive Agric, Nigeria’s agri-tech start-up, has been selected for the Y Combinator’s Winter 2019 class.

The start-up is among the 200 companies selected for the winter batch out of over 12, 000 start-up applications received for the programme during the period.

“We are grateful to have come this far and we believe with the support of YC we will build a continent that feeds the world and itself and the future of sustainable African agriculture using technology,” the start-up says in a statement.

Thrive Agric says that being part of the Y Combinator programme will enable the business reach a million farmers across the African continent by 2022.

“We have worked with about 14,000 farmers and the goal is to reach one million farmers across Africa by 2022,” Thrive Agric.

Thrive Agric helps smallholder farmers in Nigeria access loans to help scale their production; provides them with best practices, and supports them with sales of their produce to premium markets.

The Y Combinator (popularly called YC) is a start-up seed accelerator programme headquartered in Mountain View, California, USA.

All selected start-ups for the batch goes through a three-month programme in Silicon Valley to help them grow, improve and ultimately secure funding.

It has backed some of the biggest billion-dollar companies in tech including; Airbnb (YC W2009) valued at over $30 Billion; Stripe (YC S2010) valued at over $20 Billion; Cruise (YC W2014) valued at over $14 Billion; Dropbox (YC W2007) valued at over $10 Billion, and more.

Josephine Okojie