CDP Institute

MENA-focused seed investor Flat6Labs has announced the launch of a new US$95 million fund to nurture the growth and development of early-stage tech startups on the African continent. Flat6Labs is the MENA region’s leading seed and early-stage venture capital firm, running a host of startup programmes and active in Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia, Bahrain, Jordan, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia.

Naspers, Africa’s most valuable tech company by market capitalization, has wound down the operations of its R1.4 billion ($100 million) South Africa-focused venture capital fund Naspers Foundry, according to local news outlet BusinessDay.

Nigerian credit-led digital banking platform FairMoney has acquired PayForce (sub-brand of YC-backed CrowdForce), a merchant payment services that serves small businesses, as the digital lender looks to broaden its financial services proposition to merchants.

NTT, the world’s third-largest data centre service provider, said increasing competition in the sector in India will likely lead to short-term margin pressure as clients become pickier about using cloud services. In addition to global technology giants Microsoft and Amazon, many local companies have cropped up since the pandemic to build data centres in India. However, NTT said the increasing competition isn’t expected to be a threat beyond the current short-term margin pressure.

Sonata Software, a leading modernization and digital engineering company, has announced that it has signed up with Mumbai Indians as an associate partner for T20 women’s league in India. This partnership marks Sonata software first ever cricket sponsorship globally.

Despite bans by numerous big firms when it comes to use of the controversial ChatGPT, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp is encouraging its Australian employees to try out the chatbot. In a memo recommending its use, News Corp also alluded to forthcoming plans to explore 10 other high-value opportunities for AI.

Plans are for Atlassian to cut 500 jobs, which represents 5% of its global workforce, 120 of which will be jobs in Australia. The company called the move a rebalancing of priorities due to changing economic conditions.

FunP Innovation Group, the Taiwan-based digital advertising sales and advertising technology conglomerate has announced it has secured $3.12 million from Ennoconn Corporation. FunP said that it will use this capital injection to develop and roll out smart retail and cloud services solutions for the Indonesian market and other Asia Pacific (APAC) countries, under its business unit cacaFly, in a partnership with Ennoconn.

Across APAC, the majority (79%) of brands still rely heavily on third-party cookies, with over half (56%) of leaders expecting the end of third-party cookies will hurt their businesses. Currently, 52% of APAC leaders still spend at least half of their marketing budgets on cookie-based activations – and 79% actually plan to increase spending on cookie-dependent activations this year.