Nigeria’s Flutterwave and Kenya’s Gro Intelligence have been named on TIME’s 2021 list of the 100 Most Influential Companies in the world.
The annual list, which features leading firms from around the world, is divided into five categories – Pioneers, Leaders, Innovators, Disruptors and Titans.
Nigerian fintech company Flutterwave is listed in the “Pioneers” section, alongside the likes of Strava, Oatly, and Beyond Meat.
Launched in 2016, Flutterwave builds modern payments technology and infrastructure for Africa to enable people and businesses to connect with the global economy. Its solution enables banks and merchants to replace multiple payment integrations with one simple API, which enables processing of any form of payment anywhere in Africa.
Disrupt Africa reported in March the company had closed a US$170 million Series C funding round, the largest amount ever secured by an African tech startup and one that gives it “unicorn” status with a value of over US$1 billion.
Gro Intelligence, meanwhile, is listed under “Innovators”, alongside companies including Stripe, Netflix, Zoom, and Spotify.
Founded in Nairobi in 2014 and now also with offices in New York, Gro Intelligence is an AI-powered insights company that provides decision-making tools, solutions and analytics to the food, agriculture, and climate economies and their participants.
The Gro Intelligence platform aggregates, normalises and models complex data to illuminate the inter-relationships between food, climate, trade, agriculture, and macro-economic conditions, integrating over 40,000 data sets and processing north of 650 trillion data points for customer segments that range from governments to financial institutions, agricultural input companies, retailers, food and beverage companies, and various other industry participants.
Disrupt Africa reported in January the company had raised a US$85 million Series B funding round, which was until the Flutterwave round briefly the largest funding round ever raised by an African tech startup.
Also on this year’s TIME list are the likes of Alibaba, Apple, Didi Chuxing, Disney, Facebook, Google, Pfizer, Nubank, Mastercard, Samsung and Volkswagen.
