According to a 2019 report by Deloitte, about 80% of South Africans have a bank account but only 24% of them make more than three transactions monthly. Unlike other African countries, South Africa also has a functioning credit system with the prevalent use of credit cards. However, expensive value-added services like credit cards do not…
Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures has doubled down its bet on Velocity, which operates a revenue-based financing platform for e-commerce and direct-to-consumer businesses in India, just months after it first backed the Bangalore-based startup. The one-and-half-year-old Velocity said on Wednesday it has raised $20 million in its Series A financing round. Valar Ventures, which led Velocity’s…
Rahul Vohra is the founder and CEO of email app Superhuman. In the first half of 2021, global venture funding shattered the previous six-month record — set in the second half of 2020 — by more than $100 billion. The market was flooded with new startups, and one after another made headlines for deals that…
Pinterest today announced a new initiative designed to help the company increase its pace of innovation. The company is introducing an in-house, experimental products team it’s called TwoTwenty — named after the address of Pinterest’s first office. The team is comprised of engineers, designers, and other product experts who will research, prototype and test new…
Mensa Brands, an Indian startup that acquires direct-to-consumer brands and helps them scale within the home market and overseas, has become a unicorn just six months after launching its business. Falcon Edge Capital led Mensa Brands’ $135 million Series B financing round that values the Indian startup at over $1 billion, the two said Tuesday.…
Coding education platform co-founders Tung Nguyen and Ha Nguyen Vietnam’s digital economy is one of the fastest growing in the world, but the country is facing a growing shortage of IT workers. Many kids want to study coding, but school curriculums are limited, said Tung Nguyen, the co-founder of MindX, an online/offline education platform that…
Mark Cuban’s Fireside, an interactive audio platform that is helping creators share their stories with audiences through live and virtual shows, is in advanced stages to close a “seed+” round, two sources familiar with the matter told me. The financing round has already received commitment from investors such as The Chainsmokers, HBSE, Goodwater, Animal Capital…
Snapchat has inked a deal with Sony Music Entertainment to include its artists’ music in the app’s Sounds library. The company also revealed that it’s creating new AR music lenses. Soon, Snapchat will feature ‘Sound Lenses’ with a pre-selected song embedded into the lens, a lens that transforms pictures of anyone to appear as if…
Cyber security startup Immersive Labs — which recently closed a $75 million Series C funding round giving it a significant war chest — is acquiring US-based cyber startup Snap Labs in an undisclosed deal, although Immersive says it’s a “multi-million dollar figure” and will be a mix of stock and cash. Snap Labs is understood…
The commercial real estate brokerage market in South Korea is fragmented, which makes finding a new office for tenants a challenge due to inaccurate listing information, high brokerage fee and complex paperwork. A Seoul-based proptech startup called Rsquare built a data-driven platform to digitize the process, enabling tenants to compare multiple properties and find an office.…
