Viva Translate, a technology startup, announced $4 million in funding and the release of a new AI context-aware translation software. Viva Translate is an artificial intelligence software that translates emails and other written communications between Spanish and English in real time. The software works as a Chrome browser extension to provide automatic and instant translation….
Volta Trucks, a Swedish electric vehicle startup that believes it can build better urban delivery vehicles and other trucks that are safer and have a lower carbon footprint than their gas-guzzling, more clumsy, existing counterparts, has closed a large round of funding to help it get through the final mile of development before its Volta…
Voyance, a Nigerian data infrastructure company, has announced a $500,000 pre-seed funding round. Beta.Ventures led the round, with Zedcrest Capital, HoaQ Club, and Assembly Investors also participating. Angel investors included Fola Olatunji-David, founding partner of Kickoff Africa, and Nelly Chatue-Diop, co-founder and CEO of Ejara, among others. Speaking about the funding, Ovo Emorhokpor, General Partner…
Clickatell, a Cape Town-based and California-based fintech firm, CPaaS innovator, and creator of the Chat Commerce platform, announced yesterday that it had raised $91 million in its latest Series C round of funding. Arrowroot Capital led this round, with Kennedy Lewis Investment Management, Endeavor Global, and Harvest also participating. According to a press release, Clickatell…
Canza Finance, an emerging markets neobank that is building the world’s largest non-institutional-based financial system, announced the completion of its $3.27M seed round. The fundraising round was led by Fenbushi Capital, with participation from Dominance Ventures, Bixin Ventures, Consensys, Protocol Labs, Emergo Ventures, MEXC Global, NGC Ventures, XanPool, Hashkey, the founders of Celo, and others. This funding enables Canza to continue headcount growth and expand its service…
Atlantica Ventures, an African tech startup fund, has received $11.3 million in junior funding from Boost Africa and $12.5 million in senior financing from the European Investment Bank. Aniko Szigetvari and Ik Kanu founded Atlantica Ventures, an early-stage pan-African impact-focused venture capital fund, on the premise that African entrepreneurs channeling their passion and expertise through…
MarketForce, a Nairobi-based B2B platform for consumer goods retail distribution and digital financial services in Africa, has closed a $40 million Series A funding round, the largest of its kind in East and Central Africa. The funding comes seven months after the company closed on a pre-Series A round. The round was led by V8…
Wasla, an Egyptian ecommerce startup, has received a $9 million investment from Contact Financial Holding, the country’s largest non-bank financial services provider. Contact will invest up to $9 million in Wasla’s product rollout and regional expansion, with the goal of realizing the startup’s vision of enabling e-commerce, payments, and credit for a broad audience in…
Earnipay, a Nigerian fintech firm that provides flexible and on-demand salary access to income earners, has raised US$4 million in seed funding to expand its product. The seed round is led by Canaan Ventures, with participation from XYZ Ventures, Village Global, Musha Ventures, Ventures Platform, Voltron Capital, and Paystack CEO Shola Akinlade. Nonso Onwuzulike founded…
Zindi, a professional network of data scientists based in South Africa, has raised a US$1 million seed funding round to help it build on its impressive early growth. Zindi, founded in 2018 by Celina Lee, Megan Yates, and Ekow Duker with the belief that data science should be accessible to all, hosts a community of…
CrowdForce, a Y Combinator-backed agency banking platform based in Nigeria, has raised a US$3.6 million pre-Series A funding round to triple its PayForce agent network this year in order to expand its financial service offerings to underserved Nigerian communities. CrowdForce was born in 2018 as a result of a pivot and rebranding by Oluwatomi Ayorinde…
Flutterwave, a Nigeria-based fintech company, has raised $250 million in Series D funding, its single-largest investment to date, valuing the company at more than $3 billion. B Capital Group led the investment, which included new investors Alta Park Capital, Whale Rock Capital, and Lux Capital, as well as existing investors Glynn Capital, Avenir Growth, Tiger…
MoneyHash, an Egyptian fintech startup that uses a universal API and a unified checkout experience to help businesses consolidate and grow their payments and financial tech stack, has announced a US$3 million pre-seed funding round as it exits beta and prepares to launch across the Middle East and Africa, has announced a US$3 million pre-seed…
Ndovu, a Kenyan wealth-tech startup, has begun operations after securing a pre-seed funding round in October, with the goal of providing users with easy access to global financial markets. Ndovu, which was founded in 2020 by Radhika Bhachu, Ro Nyangeri, and Gianpaolo De Biase and is available on iOS and Android, allows users to invest…
Nawy, an Egyptian prop-tech startup, has raised $5 million in seed funding to help it expand across the region. Nawy, founded in 2016 by Mohamed Abou Ghanima, Abdel-Azim Osman, Ahmed Rafea, Aly Rafea, and Mostafa El Beltagy, allows users to search for homes online based on criteria such as unit size, price, and location. So…
Stitch, a South African API fintech startup, has raised a Series A funding round of US$21 million to expand its team, launch new product offerings, and enter new markets across the continent. The Stitch API enables developers to quickly connect apps to financial accounts, allowing their users to share transaction histories and balances, confirm their…
Remedial Health has received a $1 million pre-seed investment to digitize pharmacies and reduce the supply of counterfeit and substandard pharmaceutical products, beginning in Nigeria and expanding to the rest of Africa. Global Ventures and Ventures Platform led the round, with participation from Ingressive Capital, Voltron Capital, Opeyemi Awoyemi’s (Jobberman co-founder) Angel Syndicate Fund, and…
Mr. Green Africa, a Kenyan plastics recycling pioneer, has received a significant investment from impact investors and key industry stakeholders in order to scale its business model across the continent. Mr. Green Africa is a circular recycling company that has created a technology-driven plastics collection model that allows waste to be collected at the point…
Mecho Autotech, a Nigerian vehicle repair and maintenance startup, has raised $2.15 million in seed funding to expand its capacities and acquire more customers. Olusegun Owoade and Ayoola Akinkunmi founded Mecho Autotech in 2021 to provide repair and maintenance services to businesses and consumers through in-house and third-party service capacity that has passed rigorous assessments….
BasiGo, a Kenya-based electric vehicle startup, has raised $4.3 million in seed funding three months after establishing operations in East Africa’s largest economy to provide clean-energy mass transit vehicles in a country heavily reliant on fossil-fuel buses. The startup stated that it will use the new funding to establish an assembly plant in Nairobi as…
The MENA region has approximately 400 million people and a $500 billion annual savings. However, because they are a young population, the majority of them have little equity market and investment exposure. Some platforms are attempting to replicate the success of Robinhood in the United States by attracting investors from the region. Thndr, based in…
Swvl, an Egyptian mobility company, has raised an additional $21.5 million in private investment in public equity (PIPE) as part of its proposed business combination with Queen’s Gambit, ahead of its future Nasdaq listing. Swvl, founded in 2017 by Mostafa Kandil, is a mass-transit system that allows riders heading in the same direction to share…
ChapChap, a Ugandan fintech startup that creates trustworthy financial profiles for MSMEs, has received funding from Nordic Impact Funds to accelerate its commercial growth and social impact. ChapChap was founded in 2016 by Emmanuel Emodek and James Alituhikya, along with their former primary school teacher Monica Asiimwe Kiconco, with the goal of empowering small and…
Afya Rekod, a Kenyan e-health startup, has closed a US$2 million seed round to help it scale across the continent. Afya Rekod, which will be launched in April 2020, is a health data platform that allows both patients and health facilities to capture, store, and access the mobility of patients’ health data. In five countries,…
South African startup Carscan, a leading AI and AR app active in the auto-insurance space, Augmented reality app, has raised a ZAR20 million (US$1.3 million) follow-on funding round to help it further expand operations. Carscan is an augmented reality (AR) app with embedded artificial intelligence (AI) that generates an accurate, dependable, agnostic, comprehensive, and traceable…
There’s no denying that the pandemic has fueled global growth in healthtech over the last three years. The event has accelerated the use of telemedicine, virtual care, and drug delivery, which has piqued the interest of investors in the sector. Large sums of money have also been invested in growth-stage startups in Africa. Reliance Health,…
InstaDeep, a Tunisian artificial intelligence startup, has closed a $100 million Series B funding round led by Alpha Intelligence Capital and CDIB Capital International. BioNTech, Chimera Abu Dhabi, DB Digital Ventures, Google, G42, and Synergie also participated in the funding round. InstaDeep specializes in decision-making AI systems and intends to use the funds to hire…
Greycroft and Tiger Global, two American venture capital firms, led a $15 million Series A funding round for Nigerian investment platform Bamboo, which allows Nigerians to buy and sell US equities in real time via their mobile computers or phones. Motley Fool Ventures, Saison Capital, Chrysalis Capital, and Y-Michael Combinator’s Seibel all participated in the…
Ndovu, a wealth-tech startup that provides customers with instant access to global financial markets, officially launched its product suite in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital city, on Wednesday, joining Africa’s nascent wealth-tech industry. The company stated that it began operations in Kenya after realizing the market access challenges and high management costs of current investment alternatives in…
Moove, Africa’s Mobility Fintech and Uber’s only car supply partner in Africa, has secured a $10 million financing facility backed by NBK Capital Partners and Mezzanine Fund II, just two months after opening its first office in East Africa. Moove is NBK Capital Partners’ first African investment, demonstrating the potential for a mobility platform like…