December, 2021 - CDP Institute - Page 9

Dates : December 2021

Grab, Southeast Asia’s biggest ride-hailing and food delivery firm, listed on Nasdaq on Dec 2nd following its $40 billion merger with special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Altimeter Growth Corp (AGC.O). The deal is the world’s biggest ever by a blank-check company and the biggest U.S. listing by a Southeast Asian firm.

CDPI Emerging Markets

Kueski, the buy now pay later (BNPL) online consumer lender has completed more than 5 million transactions online and has just announced a US $202 million Series C financing round. The funding will be used to grow the BNPL footprint in Mexico and to build out the product ecosystem for Mexican consumers.

CDPI Emerging Markets

KIO Networks, a leading digital infrastructure provider with assets in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, will broaden I Squared Capital’s digital infrastructure. To date, I Square Digital has deployed over $3 billion across six investments with assets in 41 countries.

CDPI Emerging Markets

Lytics has launched Cloud Connect, which lets users create SQL queries to extract an audience from a cloud database and send it to an ad network. They describe it as a “freemium” product but don’t get too excited: the free version connects just one warehouse to one ad network.

CDPI Newsletter

Cloud contact center vendor Genesys announced a $580 million funding round, its first since a $900 million raise in 2016. The deal was led by Salesforce Ventures, which is rather interesting when you think about it. The deal values Genesys at $21 billion.

CDPI Newsletter

Email security vendor Mimecast has a deal to be purchased by private equity firm Permira for $5.8 billion. The price is a relatively modest 12x revenue, which is in line with the deal that Thoma Bravo set for Mimecast competitor Proofpoint in April. Of course, those low values are exactly what private equity investors find appealing.

CDPI Newsletter

We’re doing all good news today, Dear Reader. Mitto has lots of cheery information about the value of a “complete omnichannel strategy”, which correlates with higher revenue growth, more loyal customers, more customer experience investment, and probably a cure for baldness. They do find most companies are still struggling to reach that blessed state, but we won’t dwell on negative thoughts.

CDPI Newsletter

This Adweek report sponsored by Viant starts on the sad note that 73% of consumers feel they see too many ads. But things pick up when 65% say they feel good – including 27% who feel very good – when they see ads that feel personalized to their specific needs. Then it gets better: 63% pay more attention to personalized messages.

CDPI Newsletter

I saved the best for last: social media isn’t destroying society after all! Ipsos MORI did find that “nuanced” belief in conspiracy theories is more widespread than you ever imagined, which I’ll admit is upsetting. But they also report that TV news and tabloid newspapers are equally responsible for spreading them (at least in the UK). So go ahead and buy all the Facebook ads you want.

CDPI Newsletter

The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has provisionally fined Clearview AI £17 million ($22.6 million) alleging it failed to inform UK citizens it was collecting billions of their photos and continuing to process their data. The UK and Australia had opened a joint investigation of Clearview last year, and Australia regulator has also issued a similar ruling.

CDPI Privacy Newsletter

The company has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging it shared personal information with third parties without user consent. Eligible users fall into two groups: the first are people who paid for a Zoom Meetings app subscription between March 30, 2016 and July 30, 2021; and the second is anyone who downloaded, registered, used or opened the Zoom Meetings App in the same date period.

CDPI Privacy Newsletter

Zimbabwe’s president has signed the controversial Cyber Security and Data Protection Bill into law. It seeks to provide data protection and will establish a new Data Protection Authority, but human rights activists fear it will stifle dissent by spying on what citizens send and receive on social media platforms.

CDPI Privacy Newsletter