Balancing entrepreneurship and childcare can be a daunting task, made worse by the pandemic. The rising costs of childcare in the UK and the USA are forcing an increasing number of primary caregivers – the majority of whom are women – to juggle both business and caring for their children. Thousands of childcare centers that closed temporarily because of lockdowns are still at risk of shutting permanently. These centers tend to be low-margin businesses with low levels of cash reserves and may not be able to reopen due to the additional expenses
International calling app Talk360, which enables people to make reliable and affordable calls to any landline or mobile phone worldwide, has secured $4 million in funding as it prepares to launch a new pan-African payment platform in mid-2022. The seed round of funding was led by leading African venture capital investor HAVAÍC, 4Di Capital, and several prominent fintech angel investors. Talk360, a leading Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) player in Africa, enables people to make international calls through its app for a fee. It is built so that only the
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, this week announced the news that it is linking up with the Canadian performer, The Weeknd, for his After Hours Til Dawn Tour to provide “an enhanced fan experience.” The so-called ‘experience will reportedly manifest in a number of ways, including via a collaboration with The Weeknd’s creative incubator HXOUSE to produce an exclusive NFT collection and co-branded branded merch. “Binance is all about the community, about people, about inclusion. I was impressed by their focus on users and innovative edge,” said The Weeknd. “It made perfect
Religion of Sports, the media production company founded by Gotham Chopra, Michael Strahan and Tom Brady, has raised $50 million in a Series B funding round led by Shamrock Capital and joined by Elysian Park Ventures and Cerro Capital. The Series B funding round brings the company’s total to $66 million raised over three rounds. Chopra told The Hollywood Reporter that the raise will be used to help “grow the company from the production company model, which is what we have operated in for a long time, to really controlling our own destiny. To really bet
Access to credit is a big problem in Africa. Indicina is building the infrastructure to unlock it. Indicina, the digital lending platform providing analytics-driven credit decisions for lenders based in Lagos, Nigeria, has announced its seed round of $3 million. Berlin-headquartered and pan-European venture capital firm Target Global led the round with participation from Kuda, Kippa, and Edukoya. The firm’s partner Ricardo Schäefer will join Indicina’s board. Greycroft also participated in this round, and so did RV Ventures. What does Indicina do? It builds products using Open Banking so credit providers can approve more people,
Telecommunications company, Comcast RISE, has announced that it will award 100 businesses in the area with $1 million in grants. The grants will be available to small businesses that are owned and operated by women and people of color including Black, Indigenous, Hispanic, and Asian American owners. Atlanta makes up one of the five cities included in the Comcast RISE Investment Fund, which has allotted a total of $5 million to be distributed across 500 businesses. To date, the company has been able to provide $16 million to businesses owned by people of
A young Nigerian has launched a new social media app known as ‘ShapClick,’ a social media platform that aims to take over Facebook, Twitter, and others. The Nigerian app developer, Mohammed Aliyu, boasted that ShapClick would surpass other social media apps because of the installation of more authentication to protect end-to-end encryption of private chat between users and guarantee safety. A spokesman for Aliyu, Mr. Hyacinth Chiweuba, told Vanguard that ShapClick as an indigenous messaging application would enable users to chat and make audio and video calls, including an unrestricted
Diarrha N’Diaye-Mbaye feels like a mother of two. Her entrepreneurial child, Ami Colé, celebrated its first birthday a few months ago, while her actual child, which arrived in February, is only a couple of months old. N’Diaye-Mbaye, 32, launched the clean makeup brand designed for women of color during the pandemic, and now it’s projected to bring in $2.5 million in revenues by the end of the year, according to reports by BeautyIndependent. It secured over $1 million in pre-seed funding. Katherine Power, Lindsay Peoples Wagner, Hannah Bronfman, Henry Davis, Greycroft,
Nigeria’s Autochek has announced its acquisition of KIFAL Auto, a Moroccan automotive technology startup, to drive its expansion into North Africa. This announcement comes months after it acquired the Ugandan and Kenyan operations of Cheki, an online car marketplace. Autochek looks to bring Africa’s sales and servicing of cars online. It also aims to build the financial infrastructure to drive the penetration of auto financing across Africa. In October last year, the firm raised $13.1 million in a seed round and is backed by several investors, including pan-African VC firms TLcom Capital, 4DX Ventures,
The gaming industry is set to reach $222 billion thanks in part to Gen Z consumers who are the biggest and most monetizable audience, according to a new report published by Data.ai. There are more than 2.7 billion gamers worldwide, and with a young demographic it’s scale and appeal is attracting luxury brands like Balenciaga, who became the first luxury brand to partner with Fortnite on four virtual outfits, or “skins”, alongside accessories, weaponry and a virtual Balenciaga destination in-game. And in November, luxury fashion brand Moncler followed with in-game
