CDP Institute

The brainchild of Club of United Business (CUB), which is a members-only community of business owners, Boa is designed to provide a targeted way to reach other business owners for media and networking.

Komo, a self-service, no-code SaaS platform that offers gamified and interactive campaigns, including via games, promotions, competitions and loyalty plug-ins, is entering the US market. This comes after a year of significant growth resulting from Komo’s partnership with event-tech company, Patron Technology.

Indonesia-headquartered courier startup J&T Express has announced that it will acquire Shenzhen Fengwang Information Technology Co., Ltd. (Fengwang Information), the owner of Chinese e-commerce logistics provider Shenzhen Fengwang Express Co., Ltd. (Fengwang Express), for $170.09 million.

AnyMind Group has agreed to acquire the entire stock of Indonesian-based eDistributor eCommerce enabler PT Digital Distribusi Indonesia (DDI). This is the group’s first acquisition in Indonesia and comes as the two companies see mutually aligned business capabilities and goals.

Funding to Latin American startups plunged in the first quarter of 2023, hitting the lowest point in over two years amid a continued sharp contraction in late-stage dealmaking. Overall, investment in reported seed through growth stage financings in Q1 was down 84% from the year-ago quarter, per Crunchbase data. That puts Central and South America, which just over a year ago ranked as the fastest-growing startup investment region in the world, on the short list for the fastest shrinking.

E-commerce giant Mercado Libre and Brazilian unicorn Creditas teamed up to offer credit for car purchases between individuals. This is not the only alliance between large technology companies in LatAm, as the Mexican used-car unicorn Kavak allied with credit institutions in Chile.

Xebia, a pioneering Software Engineering and IT consultancy company, today announced that the company will begin implementing Salesforce Net Zero Cloud to help businesses accelerate their sustainability goals. Xebia will help companies gain insights to help them achieve their climate goals and take action.

US-based investment firm, Vanguard, which has been a backer of Ola, one of the world’s largest ride-sharing platforms, reduced the firm’s valuation by 35% to $4.8 billion from $7.4 billion. This follows Ola’s exit from several verticals, including food, grocery delivery, and the second-hand car marketplace, to focus on its mainstay ride-hailing business.

Online bottle shop, BoozeBud has stopped taking orders online and will begin laying off staff as it undergoes reassessment of its business due to insufficient funds. This comes following the company’s 2021 purchase of Get Wines Direct, in which it acquired 200,000 active customers and $80 million in combined annual revenue.

Mortar AI’s most recent version of its SaaS marketing automation platform incorporates features to help small to mid-sized agencies provide clients with AI-driven, automated campaigns that focus on first-party data and can help address challenges related to privacy compliance. The platform uses technology from Microsoft, Adform and LiveRamp and runs on Microsoft’s Azure.

Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI) in Malaysia, through Cradle Fund Sdn. Bhd. (Cradle), has launched a series of micro- conferences, MYStartup NXT, as part of the efforts to create an inclusive, impactful and sustainable startup ecosystem in Malaysia.

Stripe and WhatsApp have partnered to enable Singapore businesses to accept payments in WhatsApp chats. With Stripe Connect and Stripe Checkout integrated into WhatsApp, Singapore customers and businesses can buy and sell directly in the Meta-owned messaging app using credit cards, debit cards and Singapore’s real-time payment system PayNow.