CDP Institute

Atlassian, a Sydney-headquartered software company, plans to invest in setting up data centers in India in H1 2024. The company is betting on India’s growing economy and talent landscape to drive growth.

Alphabet’s Google, which is spending billions of dollars globally to compete with Amazon and Microsoft in the cloud space, is considering plans to build more data centres in the Middle East, a key market and one of fastest growing regions for the company’s business. The company, which is already building data centres in Saudi Arabia and Qatar and has just opened a new cloud region in Israel.

Australia Plays 2023, a report published by the Interactive Games & Entertainment Association (IGEA) found 81% of Australians play video games. This marks a 14% increase over the past two years. The research done in cooperation with Bond University found 94% of Australian households have at least one device to play video games, 48% of gamers are female, and more older women than men play video games.

Software as a Service (SaaS) medical management provider BoomerangFX is expanding into Australia in response to big growth in the aesthetic medicine market there. BoomerangFX provides comprehensive clinic practice management solutions for non-insured private pay sectors, including dermatology, cosmetic surgery, vision care and mental health. This move follows the company’s recent announcement of a worldwide partnership with Stripe to offer integrated payment options to clinics.

Advertising and marketing company D.A.Consortium Inc. (DAC) has made a strategic investment in Antsomi. This investment marks a significant milestone in the partnership between Antsomi and DAC, positioning DAC as a regional reseller of Antsomi’s innovative customer data platform, CDP 365, in the Southeast Asian region.

Pan-Asian venture capital firm, Gobi Partners has taken on the lead investor role in the Series A funding round of Southeast Asia’s largest integrated recommerce platform startup, CompAsia. Since 2016, CompAsia has transformed itself into a one-stop platform that allows customers to trade in or purchase electronic devices. The platform also offers financing plans and other options to address customer concerns about transparency when buying such goods.

ConfiAbogado, a Mexico City-based startup, raised US$1.65 million in seed funding to provide better accessibility to legal services across Latin America. ConfiAbogado focuses on providing legal solutions on volume rather than high costs. Clients enter information about their case into the ConfiAbogado system, and the company’s proprietary technology taps into a network of validated lawyers, and over 100,000 legal possibilities, to produce the best strategy and automatically create the necessary legal documents.

Autolab, which provides management software to car service facilities, has successfully raised USD $4.1 million in a funding round. The company seeks to bring transparency, standardization, and convenience to an industry often viewed as informal and untrustworthy and its software links car service facilities with diverse clients, from corporate fleets to individual vehicle owners. Autolab operates a network of more than 150 repair shops that serve over 70 vehicle fleets.

Zanifu, a Kenyan fintech providing inventory financing to micro, small and medium-sized businesses, has raised $11.2 million in debt-equity funding in a pre-Series A round led by Beyond Capital Ventures and Variant Investments. Founders Factory Africa, AAIC Investment, Google Black Founders Fund and existing investor Launch Africa also participated in the round.

The competition regulator in Kenya has given Moniepoint Inc. the green light to acquire Kopo Kopo, a Kenya-based company offering payments services and credit to businesses. Following the approval by Competition Authority of Kenya (CA), Moniepoint (formerly TeamApt) will expand its services to Kenya continuing its growth plans across the continent.

Tanzanian startup Safiri has created the digital infrastructure that enables transit operators to manage their operations and provide more – and better – services to customers. Launched in June 2022, Safiri is digitising the management of transit companies, replacing pen and paper with software in local languages, point of sale devices for the issuance of tickets, and GPS trackers for vehicles.

London-based SumUp launches in Australia, its 36th market, to provide SMEs with affordable, easy-to-use payment solutions. Among the products being introduced is SumUp Air, a popular card reader that can take up to 500 transactions on a single charge.