CDP Institute

Talent City, now known as Itana, has raised a US$2 million pre-seed, money it intends to use to establish a digital free zone. Itana, founded by CEO Luqman Edu, COO Coco Liu and  ex-Andela and Flutterwave co-founder, Iyin Aboyeji, a founding investor, is primed to be Africa’s first digital free zone. The founders say the funding will support the startup’s efforts to improve Nigeria’s ease-of-doing-business index, drive foreign direct investment (FDI), and catalyze employment in Nigeria.

Nairobi-based Kotani Pay is a crypto payments startup with a vision to make cross-border remittances easier for the large underbanked populations in Africa. The two-year-old startup is targeting a use case that concerns the livelihood of hundreds of millions of people including in Kenya, Ghana, Zambia and South Africa. The startup, which has closed a $2 million pre-seed funding round led by P1 Ventures, with participation from a number of investors including DCG/Luno and Flori Ventures, plans to further expand to Rwanda, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Tanzania and Nigeria.

Anchor, a Nigerian banking-as-a-service (BaaS) provider, has raised $2.4 million in seed investment. Justin Kan’s Goat Capital led the financing round, which also welcomed participation from FoundersX, Rebel Fund and some existing investors, including Y Combinator and Byld Ventures.

Salesforce announced the launch of Salesforce Starter for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) businesses in India. Starter is an easy-to-use CRM that includes sales, service, and email outreach tools in one suite, helping companies get started – so they have the tools to improve customer experiences, reduce costs, and drive revenue.

Center3 by stc, a regional data center and data services provider, has announced a strategic collaboration with Oracle to provide hosting and data services for the planned Oracle Cloud Riyadh Region as well as support the expansion of the existing Oracle Cloud Jeddah Region. This will help accelerate the rollout of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) services to support the increasing cloud computing demands of private and public sector organizations in Saudi Arabia.

Mitgo has launched ‘Takeads’, a privacy-first and cookieless platform to bring a user-centric approach to native advertising in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The mar-tech (marketing technology) company started to work on its native advertising offering five years ago. Takeads’ delivers targeted advertisements without utilising the users’ personal or behavioural tracking data. Instead of user data, its analytical algorithm runs on content analysis.

Gig workers, including Uber drivers and those who work for food delivery services would be granted rights to negotiate employment rights, including minimum base pay, hours, and insurance if a law introduced by Australia’s center-left Labor government goes into effect. This is an issue being considered by many countries, and in the EU, which is working on draft rules.

Launched in 2016, Desygner has a base of 32 million users worldwide. It is growing rapidly with a million new users a month and has also attracted major corporations, including Oracle, Microsoft, and Shutterstock. Now, the self-funded company is prepared to go after Melbourne-based and heavily funded Canva, which is estimated to be worth AU$39 billion (US$26.5 billion).

Venture capital firm 500 Global announced the successful close of $143 million across its largest Southeast Asian early-stage fund to date, 500 Southeast Asia III, L.P. (500 SEA III), and its growth investment vehicle for Southeast Asia. The new early-stage and growth vehicles demonstrate the team’s commitment to supporting founders in Southeast Asia from pre-seed to pre-IPO.

GX Bank Berhad (GXBank) announced that it is the first of the five digital bank licence applicants to obtain approval to commence operations in Malaysia. GXBank is a subsidiary of GXS Bank – the digital bank joint venture between Grab and Singapore Telecommunications (Singtel), as well as a consortium of Malaysian investors including Kuok Group.