Ghanaian company Dropifi, which created a smart contact widget as an alternative to ‘contact us’ forms on websites, announced today that they are the first African company to join the prestigious 500 Startups Accelerator Programme in the United States.

Founded by three graduates of Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology in Accra in 2011, the company quickly went global, selling its smart contact widget to over 5,000 small businesses all over the world.

Dropifi helps companies filter out spam through proprietary anti-spam technology, see incoming message trending data in relation to industry metrics, demographic and social media profiles of the sender, analyse the real emotions behind the messages and easily integrate with their existing CRMs, e-commerce and blogging platforms. In short, it helps companies better manage and harness information in messages from their users and visitors to help grow their business.

Dropifi started working with the 500 Startups Programme in April 2013 and since then its three founders – Effah Mensah, David Osei and Kabil Nabong – have been working with the 500 Startups team at their headquarters in San Francisco.

“Being the first African startup to join a leading US accelerator validates our idea and serves as a springboard for us to take giant leaps into helping businesses better interact with customers,” said co-founder David Osei.

“We also see it as an inspiration for young African entrepreneurs and a signpost that Africa is geared up to be the next economic frontier.”

Dropifi recently won the Global Start Up Open competition where they beat 50 international start ups to win the Kauffman Foundation award. They were flown to Rio in March to attend the Global Entrepreneurship Congress (GEC) and collect their award.

Whilst in Rio they pitched to Dave McClure, Founder of 500 Startups, and shortly after received an invitation to join the accelerator program.

"Dropifi is the first African investment for 500 Startups. Very few seed investors in Silicon Valley will put money into markets as early as Africa, but we think talent exists in every corner of the globe. Dropifi has a killer team and a promising product with global reach. The fact that they hail from Ghana makes it even cooler,” explains Dave McClure.

Since launching on Wordpress and Shopify late in 2012 there have been over 8,000 downloads on Wordpress and over 900 Shopify stores are using the Dropifi widget to collect and analyse their incoming messages and leads.