CDP Institute

With the acquisition of Mexican company, Urbvan, Swvl increases its presence and boosts its growth in Latin America. The Nasdaq-listed transportation startup acquired Urbvan for US$82 million and this expands its presence to 164 cities in 22 countries and boosts its growth in Latin America, where it already has a presence in Brazil, Argentina, and Chile.

Reliance Retail Limited has entered a long-term partnership with Gap Inc. to introduce Gap fashion to Indian consumers via brand stores and digital commerce platforms.

Platform as a Service (PaaS) company, WonderLend Hubs, has raised $1.6 million in a seed round led by Inflection Point Ventures. Plans are to expand its team, enhance the platform and broaden delivery capabilities in India and overseas.

Sydney-based global media consultancy and technology business, Audience Precision, this week unveiled its proprietary end-to-end technology platform, Precise360, for media strategy and guidance. The platform is being positioned as a single source of truth underpinned by consumer behavioural data that provides a full media strategy guidance system.

TikTok admitted to US senators that US user data was accessible in China. The company has previously stated some Australian data is kept in US servers therefore Liberal senator James Paterson wrote to TikTok to request information on Australian users’ data security.

Melbourne-based RMIT University has partnered with Adobe and Merkle to create a course to accelerate careers with graphic design principles, capabilities, and industry-leading tools within a flexible, digital delivery environment. In the last 12 months, job ad analysis through Burning Glass revealed 13,535 job postings requiring Adobe Photoshop skills or graphic design skills.

Society Pass (SoPa), the data-driven loyalty platform in Southeast Asia, has announced the acquisition of Thoughtful Media Group (Thoughtful Media), a social commerce-focused and premium digital video multi-platform network headquartered in Thailand which has an operating presence in the US, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

Robinhood, Thailand-based food delivery app and all-in-one travel service platform, said it is collaborating with Accenture to drive advertising creativity and enhance brand experiences for advertisers on the platform.

Prosperia, the Mexican startup that offers B2B services for pre-diagnosis through artificial intelligence (AI) to prevent illnesses caused by chronic diseases, raised US$2 million in a seed round. The company has focused on the prevention of blindness, which becomes a consequence of chronic diseases such as diabetes. The healthtech has two products: a risk calculator, which are intelligent questionnaires that patients can fill out online only. The other product is an eye health assessment  analyzed on the platform with Prosperia’s AI algorithms.

Loft aims to serve as a “one-stop shop” for Brazilians to help them manage the home buying and selling process. Last year, Loft acquired a Mexico City-based startup, TrueHome, and entered that market in what it described as the “start” of its international expansion. The company had become the real estate e-commerce platform with the highest revenue in emerging markets outside China.

Huawei South Africa has announced its $5.8 million (R100-million) Cloud Spark programme which the company claims will support more than 1,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) over the next 3 years.

Senegalese-US fintech Wave has secured a €90 million syndicated loan from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the investment arm of the World Bank, and other sources. The syndicated loan comprises loans from Symbiotics, Blue Orchard, Lendable, responsAbility Investments, Finnfund, and Norfund.