NALA, a Tanzanian cross-border payments company that recently pivoted from local to international money transfers, has raised $10 million in a new fundraising round. It comes almost three years after NALA secured a seven-figure pre-seed round led by Accel in 2019. It received funds from an impressive group of angel investors — Jonas Templestein, co-founder and CTO of Monzo; Vladimir Tenev, Robinhood co-founder and CEO; Deel founder Alex Bouaziz; Laura Spiekerman, co-founder of Alloy; Peeyush Ranjan, the head of Google Payments and early employees at Revolut and TransferWise. Sheel Tyle,
India had eight unicorns in 2018, nine in 2019, and 11 in 2020. Last year, the country celebrated 42. Similarly, it took China five years to reach five unicorns between 2010 and 2015, but then saw 21 unicorns in 2016 – and 91 unicorns in 2019. While Latin America has followed a similar trajectory, raising $14.8 billion in 2021 – more than it had raised between 2014-2020 combined – and minting nine of the region’s 17 unicorns. Now Africa, once a continent that was lagging behind in the investment race, is reportedly seeing $1
Ghanaian startup Float has picked up a significant round of funding with $17M already in the bag in the first few weeks of the year. The fintech which provides credit lines for businesses says the funding will be used to bolster its offerings and expand around the globe. The seed round was a mix of $7 million equity and $10 million debt. While Cauris provided debt financing, Tiger Global and JAM Fund, the investment firm of Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen co-led the equity bit. Other VC firms involved in the equity round include Kinfolk,
Nigerian mobility tech startup Metro Africa Xpress Inc. (MAX)has secured $31 million in Series B funding. The latest funding round was led by the global private equity platform, Lightrock, making its first investment in the African mobility space. Through their Digital Africa initiative, the UAE-based international venture capital firm Global Ventures also took part in the round, as did existing investors Novastar Ventures and Proparco, the French development finance institution. MAX currently designs and assembles its line of electric motorcycles. The firm says, “beyond solving the mobility challenges in Africa, we
CinetPay has secured $2.4 million in seed funding with venture capital funding from 4DX Ventures and unicorn Flutterwave. The startup, a payment gateway that allows e-merchants and merchants to accept mobile money and other payments in Francophone Africa, was founded by Idriss Monthe and Daniel Dindji in 2016. It acts as an online and point-of-sale payment solution for merchants to process payment from more than 130 payment operators — mobile money, bank cards, wallets. On the platform, merchants have to open an account and upload their KYC, integrate Cinet’s APIs, and collect payments. It came
Two-year-old startup uLesson has just announced that it closed a $15 million Series B round. The startup first launched by providing a product pack of SD cards and dongles with pre-recorded videos for K-12 students. They can either access lessons via streaming or use the SD cards to download and store the content. But uLesson has introduced new features for an all-encompassing edtech play for this demographic. It added quizzes and a homework help feature to connect students with tutors from universities. It also launched a one-to-many live class feature with polls and leaderboards
Equinix has announced its plans to acquire MainOne, a West African data center and connectivity solutions provider in Nigeria, Ghana, and the Ivory Coast, for $320 million. Armed with over $200 million in equity and debt investment, MainOne was built as West Africa’s first privately owned, open access undersea high capacity cable submarine. It’s a 7,000-kilometer cable stretching from Portugal to West Africa with landings along Accra in Ghana, Dakar in Senegal, Abidjan in the Ivory Coast, and Lagos in Nigeria. Funke Opeke launched MainOne in 2010 after noticing the poor internet
MarketForce, a Kenyan B2B retail and financial services distribution startup has expanded into five additional markets across Africa to grow RejaReja — its retailer ‘super app’ that allows informal merchants to order and pay for inventory digitally. The startup has partnered with Cellulant, a pan-African payments company that makes it possible for local and international merchants to accept “locally appropriate and alternative” payment methods from their customers to expand into these new markets. Cellulant has partnerships with 46 mobile-money operators in Africa, 120 banks and serves 35 African countries with a physical
The Kenyan startup has secured $2 million in pre-seed funding and is headed for its next phase of growth, which will involve extending loans to traders offering more relief to those that are often left out and regarded as high risk by the traditional banking sector. Fredrik Jung Abbou; a two-time unicorn founder and Norrsken Impact Accelerator were among the investors that funded the firm while the debt round had the participation of French Public Investment Bank (Bpifrance) and GreenTec Capital Partners. The funds include $1 million equity and $1
DrugStoc has raised $4.4 million in a Series A funding round led by Africa Healthcare Master Fund, Vested World, the German Development Bank and others. The investors will play a vital role in the sector’s continued growth. The firm plans to open more fulfillment centers and increase transit points and routes. It also hopes to provide more improved logistic alternatives for deliveries projected to be tardy. The founders plan to tap into more investment prospects in cold chain infrastructure with the hope of creating safer distribution for perishable items. To
