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Opera Founded Startup OPay Raises $50m for Mobile Finance in Nigeria
Opera founded OPay in 2018 on the popularity of its internet search engine. Opera’s web-browser has ranked No. 2 in usage in Africa, after Chrome, the last four years.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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India’s NiYO ‘Neo-Bank’ Raises $35m to Help Blue-Collar Workers Access Financial Services
NiYO Solutions serves as a “neo-bank” that relies on traditional financial institutions (Yes Bank and DCB banks, in its case) and offers to customers additional features such as lending and insurance. Blue-collared employees in India (and many other markets) continue to struggle in availing crucial financial services from banks that typically reserve them for the privileged segment.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- South Asia
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The Gig Economy is a Double-Edged Sword for Migrant Workers
“It is not that they are paying less to Venezuelans than to Colombians, or that they reduced payments per delivery after the arrival of migrants,” says Cristobal Perdomo, co-founder of Jaguar Venture, a venture capital firm that analysed Rappi’s business in 2016. “What I believe happened is that if they were paying, for instance, 50 pesos per delivery last year or two years ago, they can still pay 50 pesos this year and Venezuelans will keep working for them.”
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Latin America
- Tags
- employment, startups
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India’s Open ‘Neo-Bank’ Raises $30 Million to Help Businesses Automate Their Finances
Open operates as a neo-bank that offers nearly all the features of the bank with additional tools to serve the needs of a business.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- startups
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Indonesia’s KoinWorks Raises $12 Million to Grow Its P2P SME Lending Platform
SMEs have historically struggled with securing loan and other financial services from banks — creating a big opportunity for middlemen lending platforms. KoinWorks operates an online platform that uses machine learning to provide low interest loans to these small and medium sized enterprises.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Asia Pacific
- Tags
- startups
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Ethiopia’s Tech Startups Are Ready to Run the World, but the Internet Keeps Getting Blocked
As a heavily regulated market with low internet penetration, young techies in the Horn of Africa nation, he says, already suffer from the negative perception that they couldn’t be where Africa’s next high-tech workforce is nurtured.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Uber Is Pivoting to Fintech, Something Asian Startups Have Been Doing for Years
The fintech pivot has been important part of the playbook for Asian ride-hailing companies for years. India’s Ola made fintech a priority in 2015 after spinning out its payment service, Ola Money, into a standalone app, according to Tech Crunch. Indonesia’s Go-Jek started its Go-Pay service in 2016, while Malaysia’s Grab made a major push into fintech two years ago.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Asia Pacific
- Tags
- fintech, startups, transportation
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Dragons Scale Naturally; Social Enterprises Don’t: Here Are Four Tips That Make It Faster and Easier for Every Entrepreneur
If you’re a social entrepreneur, here's some bad news for you: You weren’t born to scale. According to Rob Shelton at the Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship, in reviewing 100 enterprises from the past 10 years, the Center found that less than 10% were able to scale successfully. But he also offers some good news: In spite of the odds, you can learn to scale successfully – if you're willing to shift management gears, learn some new things and push beyond your existing model. Shelton shares a straightforward process that can make scaling possible for every entrepreneur.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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