CDP Institute

Laid-off employees at Twitter’s Africa headquarters are accusing Twitter of “deliberately and recklessly flouting the laws of Ghana” and trying to “silence and intimidate” them after they were fired.

Leta, a Kenyan B2B supply chain and logistics SaaS provider launched last year to optimize fleet management, is looking for growth opportunities in West Africa, even as it scales operations in its existing five markets with a a $3 million pre-seed funding.

Nestcoin, one of the startups leading crypto and web3 efforts in Africa, announced that it was laying off several employees and slashing the salaries of those left to stay, by as much as 40%. The news is, in part, connected to the downfall of crypto exchange FTX.

Oracle India plans to focus on healthcare and public sector verticals to drive growth in the region. It will also strengthen its partner ecosystem and increase hiring of skilled and specialised workforce to serve the growing demand for its offerings. The company sees healthcare as a big market opportunity as the sector had been inert in introducing innovation to its system.

US communications platform Zoom Video Communications Inc. has sought approval from the Indian government to introduce its Zoom Phone service in India as it seeks to challenge rivals Microsoft and Cisco in this market. Zoom Phone is a voice over internet protocol (VoIP) based service that allows businesses to make phone calls using the cloud-based Zoom software platform.

Magnite, the world’s largest independent omnichannel sell-side advertising platform, released a study entitled “India Embraces the Streaming Era” that found ads on streaming platforms capture more attention than ads on social media. Nearly two thirds of India’s streamers (64%) are more responsive to advertising on streaming platforms, with many stating they often search for the product (48%) and make a purchase (33%) after the fact.

Global asset manager Blackstone Group has forayed into the data center business in Asia with a planned capacity of 600 MW across two large hyperscale data centers in India. The New York-based investor has set up Lumina CloudInfra, a data center platform, which will be owned and managed by Blackstone’s Real Estate and Tactical Opportunities funds.

AnyMind Group, a Singapore-based end-to-end commerce enablement company, announced that the Tokyo Stock Exchange has approved the initial listing of the Company’s shares on the growth market of the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Meta’s layoff of 11,000 employees has impacted several departments in the Asia Pacific region. The employees from departments including politics and government outreach, content design, product marketing, creative strategy, learning and development, news partnerships, employer branding and recruitment marketing, and recruitment were impacted. These were a mix of local and regional roles, and it is unclear how many Asia Pacific employees in total have been impacted.

Mendel, a Mexican platform for companies to manage their expenses through virtual and physical credit cards, announced it has raised US$60 million. Through technology applied to finance, Mendel allows companies to control and allocate expenses for their teams. Their mission is to restore agility to large companies so that they can advance towards the digitization of their finances through tools that make their processes more efficient and increase the transparency of their payment flows.

Muncher, a chain of dark kitchens born in Colombia, announced the raise of a Series B for US$27 million. In announcing the round, the company communicated that it would seek to increase the 400 food businesses it operates, spread across 11 cities in Colombia, Peru, Mexico, and Brazil, emphasizing the latter two countries. The Colombian foodtech is looking for strategic locations to deploy its modular kitchens and digital sales technology, including smart menus, customer data management, and visual integration of all sales channels and business intelligence.

Kenyan startup BasiGo has raised US$6.6 million in new seed funding to begin commercial delivery of locally manufactured electric buses and charging infrastructure.