Startups have sought to use technology to digitize processes in Africa’s B2B e-commerce and retail space over the past couple of years. While many focus on moving products and providing credit, issues around cash overdependency haven’t been tackled at scale. Here’s why this is a critical problem. When traditional distributors move goods from manufacturers and…
Meal deliveries in Vietnamese cities typically take less than half an hour, but grocery deliveries are lagging behind, sometimes taking up to two to three hours, says Rino founder Trung Thanh Nguyen. By creating a vertically-integrated logistics infrastructure centered around “dark stores,” or stores set up for order fulfillment only, Nguyen says Rino can cut…
Today, if a hematologist wanted to dive into the exact organization and structure of your blood cells, they’d probably need a microscope in a lab. Scopio, an Israel-based startup that just closed a $50 million Series C round, argues that soon, a lot of that work could be done with nothing more than a laptop.…
Census, a startup building a data layer between business operations and a company’s data warehouse, confirmed an Axios story from earlier this week that it has raised a $60 million Series B on a valuation of $630 million. CEO Boris Jabes said that from the start he wanted to build something that would allow mostly…
Nigeria has more than 12 million registered vehicles, and approximately 90% of them are used cars that need frequent checkups to prevent recurring breakdowns. Given this number, one would expect effective vehicle maintenance to be standard in Nigeria. But that’s not the case: Most of the service providers in the country, usually auto mechanics, are…
Most companies today recognize the importance of global warming. As such, they are redefining their goals in an effort to address the climate change issue. Envisioning Partners, a Seoul-based venture capital firm, has secured its latest impact fund, the oversubscribed $64 million (76.8 billion KRW) Envisioning Climate Solutions (ECS) Fund, to back startups combating the…
The U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) has seized over 94,000 bitcoins that were allegedly stolen in the 2016 hack of crypto exchange Bitfinex and arrested a married couple suspected to have laundered the money, the department announced today. The couple — Ilya Lichtenstein, 34, and Heather Morgan, 31 — faces charges of conspiring to launder money…
Flexibits, the company behind popular calendar app Fantastical, has added several new features that should help with scheduling. While Calendly seems to be the dominating player in this space, Flexibits pitches its new ‘Openings’ feature as a privacy-first scheduling feature. And, of course, it’s built into Fantastical directly, which means that you don’t need another…
A lot of SaaS products are sold on flat-rate subscriptions. But there is a growing trend, especially among more price-conscious customers, to demand more granular pricing, and we now live in a world where a mix of data science, predictive analytics and cloud computing can make that feasible. Today, one of the companies building tools…
Retail investment apps in Southeast Asia attracted a lot of funding last year, and the trend looks set to continue with Vietnam-focused Infina announcing that it has added $4 million to its seed funding. Along with the $2 million it announced in June, this brings the round’s total to $6 million. Investors include Sequoia Capital…
