seed

Duplo, a Nigerian B2B payment startup, announced Wednesday it has raised a $4.3 million seed round. The round included participation from Liquid2 Ventures, Soma Capital, Tribe Capital, Commerce Ventures, Basecamp Fund, and Y Combinator, existing investor Oui Capital also participated. With the new funding, the startup said it plans to launch new products and expand into new business areas in Nigeria. Launched in September 2021 by Yele Oyekola and Tunde Akinnuwa, Duplo’s end-to-end solution automates the…

Grey, a Nigerian digital banking startup, announced on Monday that it has raised a $2 million seed round. The round was led by participation from Y Combinator, Soma Capital, Heirloom Fund, True Culture Fund, angel investors Alan Rutledge, Samvit Ramadurgam, Karthik Ramakrishnan, and other high-profile investors. With the new funding, the startup said it plans to launch into new markets and extend its product suite to both remittances, person-to-person and business-to-business payments for African cross-border…

Indian crypto exchange WazirX’s co-founder Nischal Shetty is in advanced stages of talks to raise a maiden funding round for his new venture, sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. Shetty is raising $20 million to $30 million in a seed financing round for his blockchain startup Shardeum, sources said, requesting anonymity as the deliberations are ongoing and private. The funding round proposes to value the startup at about $200 million, the sources added. The Spartan Group, Struck…

The power grid supply in Africa is erratic and inconsistent, affecting rural and urban households and businesses. For restaurants or neighborhood stores dealing with perishables, frozen foods and beverages, having intermittent electricity inhibits the growth of their businesses. Some of them turn to diesel-fueled generators, which are expensive and toxic, to provide electricity. Companies such as Koolboks are providing an alternative by creating a solution that can generate refrigeration without power. The…

Pastel, a Nigerian digital bookkeeping platform for traders, announced Monday it has raised a $5.5 million seed round. The round, led by pan-African venture capital firm TLcom Capital, included other VC firms such as Global Founders Capital (GFC), Golden Palm Investments, DFS Labs, Ulu Ventures, Plug and Play, and Soma Cap. The new funding would be deployed to expand Pastel’s product offerings and develop more productivity and finance management features and tools around group savings, loans and payments for…

JD Alois / Crowdfund Insider: Las Vegas-based Fortress Blockchain Technologies, which is building financial, regulatory, and tech B2B infrastructure for Web3 companies, raised a $22.5M seed — Fortress Blockchain Technology has raised a $22.5 million seed round to pursue its vision for B2B infrastructure for Web3. JD Alois / Crowdfund Insider: Las Vegas-based Fortress Blockchain Technologies, which is building financial, regulatory, and tech B2B infrastructure for Web3 companies, raised a $22.5M…

Is there any point in doing that?At a first glance, the answer might seem obvious. But let’s not hurry with the conclusions before digging a little bit deeper.Photo by Markus Spiske on UnsplashI’ll start with a short story to create the context.Random Seed optimization in practiceAbout 7 years ago, I started to learn Data Science and at about the same time I also started to compete in Machine Learning competitions on Kaggle platform. I knew only a little bit of theory but didn’t have much experience in building real…

Hide your crypto wallet seed phrase inside some of the weirdest places to maintain security One of the basic principles that cryptocurrency investors should follow is to securely store the passwords and ensure that they are not stolen! Basically, a crypto wallet seed phrase is the key to unlocking and recovering cryptocurrency; a seed phrase should always be secured. Now that the prices of almost all digital assets are low, more and more investors are trying to join the market. Hence, it might be time for a crypto…

This past month has seen several African fintechs such as Flutterwave and Union54 make headlines for compliance checks and fraud issues. Both unlinked events re-emphasize the importance of know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) checks and why regulators enforce strict policies that financial institutions need to be held accountable to while operating across the continent and globally. For the many startups whose services help keep the operations of financial institutions such as banks and fintechs…

Right from the launch of its first product in 2020, Kenyan insurtech Lami Technologies set out to increase insurance penetration in Kenya and the rest of Africa. They began on this path by building and distributing an end-to-end digital insurance platform and API that allowed businesses in different sectors to create tailored insurance solutions for their customers. With its API platform gaining ground in the insurance space, the startup is also planning to provide tech solutions that will digitize agents and brokers…