Kenya’s Lipa Later, a fintech platform founded to empower African businesses to do more by enabling e-commerce, financial inclusion, and shopping on a centralised and fully integrated platform, has raised KES500 million (US$3.4 million) from a privately-placed debt issuance to help it expand its offerings.
Enza Capital, a venture capital firm that backs startups “organizing the offline online” and “digitizing key African industries,” has closed US$58 million across two funds. In 2019, the company launched an early-stage fund to “find, back, and help build category-defining startups” in the pre-seed and seed stages. The fund is still active and has invested in fintech, logistics, health, human capital and climate tech companies.
Conversational engagement platform Gupshup has introduced UPI payments for people using feature phones via a native app called GSPay. The app, developed along with National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), will use SMS or even IVR based payments system, and do away with the need of data or internet connectivity.
Enterprise AI vendor Uniphore has acquired CDP ActionIQ and cloud data engineering system Infoworks. The combination of products will create a Zero Data AI Cloud that simplifies AI deployments by enabling companies to access data for AI projects without moving it from existing systems. Prices were not announced.