CDP Institute

Know-it, a Glasgow-based fintech will expand into Australia with its credit management platform in 2024. The platform used by small medium enterprises (SMEs) to manage credit control processes, can help minimize late payments and boost cashflow.

Vietnam’s electric automaker VinFast celebrated its debut as a public company on Aug 15, with its shares trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange in the US. The IPO became a reality after VinFast completed its merger a day earlier with Hong Kong-based special purpose acquisition company (Spac) Black Spade, in what was the largest M&A deal in the Asia-Pacific region so far this year. It is also the fourth highest for such Spac deals.

Indonesian e-commerce platform Uway announced a new round of financing of US$500 million. The firm said that Uway’s goal is to create a fully optimized supply chain that allows every consumer to get the goods they need in the most convenient way possible.

The renowned Colombian crowdfunding platform Vaki has announced its entry into the Mexican market to revolutionize and expand the donation sector in the country. Vaki has been a driving force in fundraising, accumulating more than USD$11 million from around 500,000 people. The platform joins the growing trend of digitization and the creation of online platforms, which has taken crowdfunding to new heights in recent years.

The recent research conducted by Signifyd, a company providing anti-fraud solutions for ecommerce, has identified an alarming increase in fraud pressure in Mexico over the last three months. Fraud pressure and fraud attempts targeting merchants increased by 68% in June 2023 compared to April of the same year. Additionally, there was a 106% increase compared to May 2022. Despite these positive figures, Mexico leads in e-commerce fraud risk in the region, with a growth of 72% per year, three times faster than the growth of electronic commerce.

Mastercard has agreed to purchase a minority stake in the fintech division of MTN Group, Africa’s largest cell phone provider, which it values at US$5.2 billion. The signing of the formal investment agreements will likely occur very soon as both parties near the end of the regular due diligence process.

Nigeria’s mobility fintech company Moove, Uber’s largest vehicle supply partner in EMEA, has announced a further US$76 million in funding to fuel further global expansion. Founded in 2019 by British-born Nigerians Ladi Delano and Jide Odunsi, Moove is democratizing vehicle ownership in Africa by providing revenue-based vehicle financing to mobility entrepreneurs.

Founders Factory Africa has secured an additional US$114 million in funding from Mastercard Foundation and Johnson & Johnson to scale its model to better serve founders across the African tech ecosystem. Founders Factory, which originally launched in London in 2015 and has already built more than 70 startups, launched African operations in Johannesburg in 2018, from where it plans to design, build and scale 140 disruptive tech startups across Africa.

Leading digital marketing group, Incubeta announced its acquisition of Dubai-based integrated digital marketing agency Bruce Clay MENA, specialists in search, social and creative. This acquisition, the fourth in 12 months for Incubeta, will expand its global presence in the Middle East and North Africa, allowing the group to continue driving growth for clients through their expertise, and best practices in media, technology and creative.

The Utter Pradesh (UP) Government signed a Memorandum of Understand (MoU) with Innogress, a project promoter, for the Indraprastha Quantum Data Center (IQDC). According to Innogress, the data center is planned to have a million-qubit-powered quantum computer. For now, no exact deadline has been released for this project, though Innogress claims to be aligned with the sector’s leaders.

The union ministry of education has joined hands with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) to modernise India’s national education technology platform—Digital Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing (DIKSHA). Under the multi-year collaboration agreement, OCI will help the Ministry of Education use DIKSHA to provide educational resources to millions of additional students.

Singapore-based D3 Labs has partnered with the Indonesian Blockchain Association to support the first phase of digital rupiah development as part of Project Garuda, which was initiated by Bank Indonesia, the country’s central bank.