Nigeria’s Connected Analytics (ThankUCash) is the only African company in 500 Startups’ 26th batch of startups. The full list was released by Aaron Blumenthal of 500 startups today.
This group of 29 companies was chosen from over 3,000 applicants, representing a less than 1% acceptance rate.
Founded in 2018, Connected Analytics helps businesses and banks integrate data analytics and rewards in order to retain customers and increase revenue. Founders include Madonna Ononobi, Simeon Ononobi, Suraj Supekar and Harshal Gandole.
Commenting on the selection, CEO/Co-founder Simeon Ononobi said, “We started this company with a view to solving a problem arising from businesses shutting down due to a lack of knowledge of their customers and also not having to utilize data to help them grow. With that in mind, we set out to solve this problem by using decentralized rewards and data analysis. This has led to the creation of ThankUCash, a multi-merchant rewards system that helps businesses/banks retain existing customers, acquire new customers and ultimately grow the business using rewards and data analysis. ThankUCash is just the first in a suite of business tools we have developed to help businesses achieve growth. At ThankUCash, we cater for everyone and our aim is to make everyone happy, from customers getting rewards to merchants/businesses to grow their businesses to attendants excited to work as we share the incentives across all the stakeholders within a business chain.”
“We are very excited to be joining a long list of established companies to have passed the 500 Startup Accelerator from Twillo, Sendgrid, Credit Karma to Grab and Canva. We hope to keep growing and get to a place we can look back and get excited at the list of companies we have helped grow.” he added
Of the 29 companies in Batch 26, 37% come from outside of the U.S., including Brazil, Nigeria and India. 30% of the companies have a female founder and 70% have one or more founders who identify as a racial minority.
Here is the full list of startups in the 26th batch.
- Acadium: Connects business owners and marketing professionals with aspiring digital marketers.
- Alloy Card: Offers a consumer credit card with automation that gives people more control over their finances while saving time.
- Amixr: Incident management software that helps engineering teams around the world optimize their workflow while minimizing hassles.
- Appbind: Lets partners buy and resell online software subscriptions as easily as licensed software, by bringing B2B SaaS into the global reseller market of implementation consultants, system integrators and distributors.
- Bliinx: Offers an easy and fast way to find information on business relationships by aggregating all interactions with contacts into Office 365.
- Briza: Provides an insurance-as-a-service API that enables instant quoting, binding and issuance of commercial insurance policies.
- Butlr: Through sensor networks and AI, Butlr helps retail stores increase in-store sales by applying real-time customer behavior analytics.
- CENOS: Easy-to-use simulation software that allows engineers to iterate designs faster than physical prototypes for induction heating and antenna design, among others.
- Connected Analytics: Nigeria-based company helping businesses and banks integrate data analytics and rewards in order to retain customers and increase revenue.
- Fakespot: Eliminates misinformation and deceptive content on ecommerce sites for consumers, brands and platforms.
- GamerzClass: Offers exclusive esports masterclasses with professionals to shape the future of gaming.
- Get on Board: Recruitment platform that connects global companies with the best Latin American tech talent.
- Juked: Aggregates information on esports games, including live streams, player profiles, scores and calendars to make esports easier to watch and to promote engagement.
- Kyndoo: Helps advertisers weed out fraudulent social media influencers, and provides data around their authenticity and performance.
- Mero Technologies: Retrofits commercial buildings with sensors to analyze in real time traffic and consumables, such as toilet paper and soap, to inform cleaning routes.
- Omnitron Sensors: Enables full autonomy of self-driving cars and drones with novel silicon photonics processes for sensors in safety-critical systems.
- Pilota: Applies machine learning to predict flight disruptions for passengers and automatically re-books a traveler’s flight for free.
- Plant an App: Gives IT teams the speed of low-code development without compromising flexibility.
- Pluto: Customizes sleep pillows at scale based on the user’s body stats, such as height, neck-to-shoulder ratio and sleep preferences in order to optimize sleep.
- Predina: Applies AI to predict the risk of vehicle crashes for insurance and safety purposes, by analyzing more than 14 million historical crashes and other factors, such as street intersections, weather conditions and time.
- Renetec: Enables the creation of GUIs for embedded systems with HTML, CSS and JavaScript, which reduces development time and costs.
- ShardSecure: Enables enterprises to securely move and store sensitive information to the cloud.
- Shiplyst: India-based ocean freight procurement marketplace that reduces costs for exporters and importers and gives them greater visibility into their shipments.
- Silk + Sonder: Provides a women’s mental wellness subscription service that makes daily self-help more personalized through journaling and peer-to-peer support.
- Sira Medical: Helps clinicians plan surgeries more efficiently through augmented reality, by providing them with high fidelity 3D holograms of CT scans and MRIs.
- The Atlas: An online community of city officials crowdsourcing ideas that is modernizing the $1.6 trillion local government market.
- Thematic: Matches content creators who need great songs for their videos with music artists who need influencer marketing.
- Trash Warrior: Offers on-demand junk removal services for businesses. Customers can book services online for affordable pricing and reliable quality.
- Userpilot: Helps software product managers personalize the in-app experience across the user journey at scale.
