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Gates Foundation Partners Ripple and Coil in Financial Inclusion Initiative
Other than implementing Ripple’s Interledger Protocol, ways of using open source payments software MojaLoop to enable disbursement systems geared towards the poor will be explored. Gates Foundation provided the funding which financed the development of MojaLoop (which borrows the Swahili word Moja, meaning one).
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Finding the Right Financial Partner: Lessons Learned from One Startup’s Success in the Funding World
Kinnos was founded during the Ebola outbreak of 2014, marketing an innovative chemical product that allows even untrained workers to apply disinfectant correctly. Its founders (then students at Columbia University) quickly received more than $750,000 in grants and prizes. But as their company grew, they had to learn to navigate the risky landscape of startup investment. According to Christina Tamer at VentureWell, the Kinnos team's success in this area—they have raised $1 million in venture funding from angel investors—offers a number of key lessons for other entrepreneurs.
- Categories
- Health Care, Investing, Social Enterprise
- Tags
- impact investing, startups
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Brazil’s Nubank is now worth $4 billion after Tencent’s $180 million investment
Through the investment, Tencent will gain an understanding of how Nubank has managed to service 5 million credit card holders, and the game plan the company is deploying to develop its own savings accounts and other banking services.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Latin America
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The Definition of Insanity: Why Repeating the Same Approach to Enterprise Support is Failing Africa’s SMEs
It’s often said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. So in a region where 84 percent of SMEs struggle to access capital, why do investors keep recycling the same failed approaches when financing African enterprises? Mercy Mangeni and Joshua Murima at Intellecap discuss what investors and entrepreneurs have done wrong – and explore some innovative ways their organization is working to make it right.
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Africa Roundup: Paga goes global and 4 startups raise $99M in VC
Paga looks to go head to head with regional and global payment players, such as PayPal, Alipay, and Safaricom according to Oviosu.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- digital payments, fintech, startups
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Omidyar Network to invest $250 million in Indian ventures
Omidyar, which has been in India for about 10 years, has already invested roughly $250 million in the country, backing about 73 organizations and start-ups, with 70% of those being equity investments and the rest being grants.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- impact investing, startups
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Oxford Expands Support For Social Entrepreneurs
Oxford University has announced it will be launching new support programmes for social enterprises in an effort to expand the impact of startups incubated at the University.
- Categories
- Education
- Tags
- startups
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How a Ugandan prince and a crypto startup are planning an African revolution
Crypto and blockchain enthusiasts have been railing for years against the centralized world of banks, but many have been doing so from the privileged vantage point of developed countries. But what if blockchain technology turned out to be most revolutionary in emerging economies?
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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