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PhonePe said it has raised another $100 million as part of an ongoing round, a deliberation that has so far pulled $450 million despite the market slump, as the Indian fintech giant bulks up its war chest following the recent separation from the parent firm Flipkart. Ribbit Capital, Tiger Global and TVS Capital pumped the […]

Tiger Global and Ribbit invest another $100 million in PhonePe by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch

Many software projects emerge because—somewhere out there—a programmer had a personal problem to solve. That’s more or less what happened to Graydon Hoare. In 2006, Hoare was a 29-year-old computer programmer working for Mozilla, the open-source browser company. Returning home to his apartment in Vancouver, he found that the elevator was out of order; its…

After working in Africa’s microfinance space for seven years, including at Botswana’s Letshego, Brian Dempsey took a break in 2020 to build Power Financial Wellness, operating out of Kenya. Dempsey said the launch of Power was informed by the trends he noticed in the micro-lending space, and experience garnered from his stint in the micro-finance […]

Kenya’s fintech Power set to scale after $3M seed round by Annie Njanja originally published on TechCrunch

Africa’s smartphone market shrunk by 18% in 2022 compared to the previous year, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC). The slump was driven by a reduction in consumer spending due to inflation, and economic uncertainties, but it was not unique to Africa as smartphone shipment dipped across major markets last year. According to IDC, […]

Africa’s smartphone market shrunk by 18% last year by Annie Njanja originally published on TechCrunch

Last week, China’s lidar maker Hesai raised an upsized IPO in the U.S. at a time the industry is reeling from layoffs, bankruptcy, and consolidation. The Shanghai- and California- based company, which makes the sensing technology critical to autonomous driving and increasingly advanced driver assistant systems, raised $190 million from its public offering on Nasdaq. […]

Amid merger and bankruptcy in the West, lidar maker Hesai nails $190M IPO by Rita Liao originally published on TechCrunch

Terraa, a Moroccan B2B  tech-enabled food distribution platform, has raised $1.5 million pre-seed funding in a round led by FoodLabs, a European early-stage VC investor and venture studio for food, sustainability and health. Other participants in the round were UM6P Ventures, Outlierz Ventures, Musha Ventures, and Africa-centric DFS Lab. Founded by Youssef Benkirane and Benoit […]

Morocco’s foodtech Terraa raises $1.5M led by FoodLabs by Annie Njanja originally published on TechCrunch