Nigeria’s ChowCentral is one of three African startups in Y Combinator’s Summer 2023 batch

ChowCentral, a food-delivery startup, is one of three African startups chosen for Y Combinator’s summer time 2023 class. It extends Y Combinator’s wager on meals supply in Africa.

ChowCentral, ‘a Nigerian startup building restaurant chains for Africans who want high-quality meals,’ has been accepted into Y Combinator’s Summer class of 2023. Only three African startups had been chosen in this 12 months’s cohort, together with Rwanda’s Eden Care and a yet-to-be-named startup from DRC Congo. ChowCental was based by Tosin Onafuye, Christopher Obasi and Adeyemi Onafuye. 

As half of the announcement, Y Combinator shared that the startup at present brings in over $80,000 in month-to-month income and touted ChowCentral’s “delicious recipes and faster deliveries” as half of its attraction. ChowCentral was initially referred to as 500 Chow and was launched in 2020 to ship meals that value ₦500 to ₦800, a value-led promise. According to its founders, “Chow Central started as a fun experiment shortly after we graduated from University. We created a virtual restaurant page on Twitter to sell affordable meals and also help underutilized restaurants get sales during the Covid lockdown.”

In its present iteration, ChowCentral operates a “central kitchen” and companions with “underutilized commercial kitchens” as success facilities. On its web site, ChowCentral is a meals supply service that permits prospects to order meals from completely different eating places, pay with their in-app pockets and observe their orders in real-time. ChowCentral will be a part of an more and more aggressive meals supply panorama with Jumia Food, Bolt Eats, Glovo, and AreaChops. Last week, TechCabal reported that Eden Life, a house service platform, was additionally experimenting with fast-food supply.

Y Combinator’s wager on meals supply startups in Africa 

In 2022, solely eight African startups had been chosen for Y Combinator’s summer time batch. While fintech startups had probably the most illustration, with six of the eight startups, the opposite two had been meals supply startups. Chowdeck and FoodCourtroom, two Lagos-based supply startups, had been the shock inclusions in the 2022 summer time batch. Both startups have seen vital progress in the final 12 months. TechCabal reported final week that Chowdeck is rolling out grocery supply companies in Lagos. The addition of grocery supply means Chowdeck will compete with Jumia on two key fronts. 

Y Combinator has good purpose to be bullish on meals supply, having backed DoorDash in 2013. It has additionally backed quite a few different meals supply startups. In 2021, it chosen Vendease, a Nigerian B2B startup that serves eating places.