Yellow Card, an African Bitcoin exchange that recently announced a $15 million Series A funding, is one of the continent’s leading trailblazers in cryptocurrency. Its most recent round was led by Valar Ventures, Third Prime, and Castle Island Ventures. Square, Coinbase Ventures, and Blockchain.com Ventures. Now Yellow Card plans to use its funding to grow its team, launch new products, and expand to more African countries across the continent. According to Forbes, the announcement makes it the most considerable funding by a B2C crypto exchange in Africa. The firm was first launched in 2018 in Nigeria
Nigeria and San Francisco-based start-up, Klasha, has just announced its partnership with OpenCart, an all-in-one e-commerce builder that provides businesses with the tools to create and launch an online store. Klasha, first launched in 2018 by Jess Anuna and Kemi Oritsejafor, specializes in helping merchants worldwide sell online to Africa and receive payments in local currency. The new partnership means that OpenCart merchants can now sell more and accept payments online from customers across the continent while enjoying “superfast last-mile delivery to customers across the continent within 10 days.” Merchants who
Infibranches Technologies Limited has secured $2million in funding from ‘All On,’ an investment company backed by oil and gas giant Shell. The Nigerian firm, founded in 2019 by Olusola Owoyemi, aims to provide digital financial services for service providers in the energy sector. Through its flagship products – OmniBranches and Green Energy Plug – Infibranches helps companies with extensive distribution networks. With the support of The Nigerian Off-Grid Market Acceleration Programme, it has also developed a payment system that helps to facilitate payment collection for providers of solar home systems and mini-grid developers through
Netflix Inc has launched a free mobile plan in Kenya as part of its strategy to spark growth in the East African nation, home to over 20 million internet users. The plan will be rolled out to all users in the country; it will be available on Android mobile phones and will not have any ads. Some shows will not be included in the free plan, and they will be marked with a lock icon. Clicking on one of those titles will encourage the user to sign up for a
Yonas Beshawred, the CEO of StackShare and countless other ventures, is a man not afraid to tell it as it is and this skill has worked in his favor. His venture, StackShare, a platform that allows software developers and tech companies to share their tools and how they use them, has gone from strength to strength since its launch in 2014. What first started as a side project on a WordPress blog, StackShare has raised $7 million and reached 1M developers, engineers, CTOs, VPEs, architects, and founders. Although the journey
African genomics startup 54gene has been at the forefront of bridging the divide in the global genomics market, where less than 3% of genetic material used in research is from the continent. This figure is quite shocking since Africans and people of African descent are more genetically diverse than any other population. But 54gene, which was first launched in 2018, is on a mission to radically change this picture, and the $25 million it secured in Series B funding will bolster its efforts. The milestone round came after founder Dr. Abasi Ene-Obong raised
The Nigerian agritech startup has just announced that it raised $4.2million through a seed round and a series of grants to scale its business across the country. Releaf, which has built a proprietary hardware and software solution to make farmers and food factories more efficient and profitable, was first launched in 2017 by Ikenna Nzewi and Uzoma Ayogu. The pair then went on to build Kraken, a proprietary patent-pending machine. But how does it actually work? Releaf buys nuts from farmers, then uses the Kraken to crack the nuts and crush the kernels into
When it comes to Venture Capital, the UK is far from meeting the necessary targets for diversity, particularly when it comes to the Black community. But Black VCs up and down the country are not staying silent anymore, and many of them are becoming more and more vocal on the lack of diversity in the sector, with some taking matters into their own hands to make an active change. From blogs and podcasts that advise new founders, group mentoring sessions to even launching their own firms specifically for Black aspiring VCs
Nigeria’s one-click checkout platform OurPass has raised $1Million during its pre-seed round to help it scale its business across the country. The West Africa e-commerce market is still heavily reliant on cash on delivery, according to a recent survey conducted by Jumia. As of 2019, 70% of Nigerians said they prefer cash on delivery options to make online payments. But for those who do try to buy online – yearly, about 75% of shopping carts are abandoned because of how difficult the checkout experience can be with long forms and
London-based digital-first car insurance provider Marshmallow has just become the UK’s second Black-founded unicorn after raising an $83million Series B – valuing it at $1.25 billion. The start-up’s founders Oliver and Alexander Kent-Braham, who are twins, first launched the platform in 2017 – initially set out to serve ex-pats who struggled to find affordable insurance. But since its boom and rapid scale in business – the firm now describes itself as a “mass market.” According to Sifted, it is one of only two UK insurance start-ups to be granted a license
