STARTUP WATCH- Egypt’s ExpandCart has been accepted into the fifth cohort of Hong Kong accelerator Betatron, making it the only African startup to have been included. Entry into the accelerator is notoriously competitive, with Venture Burn reporting that Betatron had an overall acceptance rate of just 0.6% of the 1301 startups that applied. Betatron has invested USD 150k into each startup in the cohort — which features seven other companies in addition to ExpandCart — according to a post from its marketing director, Sam Ameen. Each company will now be assigned a mentor from Betatron’s network, and will receive support on a variety of issues that are key to building a business. They will spend the next three months working to scale up.

ExpandCart is an e-commerce platform that allows customers to easily create and manage online shops, even if they don’t have any prior technical experience. Support is offered to customers in marketing, sales, store management and website design, in both English and Arabic. The company was founded in 2013 by Egyptians Yasser Seleem and Amr Shawqy.