Norrsken22, a Pan-African venture capital firm, has achieved the final close of its debut fund, raising a total of US$205 million, surpassing its initial target. This also highlights a keen interest from institutional investors in supporting African startups at an essential phase of their journey.
Coincidence or not, here’s another acquisition story. Getir, the “ultrafast” grocery delivery company that promises to deliver orders within 15 minutes, is buying Fresh Direct, which serves the New York regional market. Don’t get too excited; Fresh Direct services will continue as before. I think we can chalk this up to consolidation as the crazily-competitive and complex last mile delivery market adapts to post-Covid reality.
Ghanaian startup Hurupay is helping businesses and individuals across Africa overcome the negative impacts of fluctuating local currencies by allowing them to make and receive stablecoin-based payments. Formed earlier this year, Hurupay is a crypto wallet that enables users to access stablecoins, which are non-volatile cryptocurrencies pegged to the value of the US dollar at a ratio of 1:1.
RudderStack, which styles itself “the AI Data Cloud Native CDP”, has unveiled a suite of Data Apps running on its Customer 360 solution, which in turn runs within Snowflake AI Data Cloud. The apps support the fast delivery of data projects — for example, attribution data and propensity scores — from data teams to business stakeholders. They are now available to Enterprise Tier RudderStack customers on Snowflake.