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SumUp raises $624M at $8.5B valuation, with its payments and business tech now used by 4M SMBs

A decade ago, SumUp was one of the army of fintechs that made names for themselves with dongles that turned basic smartphones into card payment terminals. Today, the London-based company has expanded

Alibaba extends logistics arm to Pakistan for e-commerce unit Daraz

Cainiao, the logistics service operated by Alibaba, is launching two automated distribution centers in Karachi and Lahore as its first entry into Pakistan, it announced on Friday. Alibaba’s over

Project A Ventures closes its fourth fund, hitting $375M, the largest to date

Project A Ventures launched 10 years ago in Berlin when a handful of a ex-Rocket Internet players decided they’d try their own hand at this startup stuff. Since then they’ve done pretty well, inve

The e-commerce boom is still afoot in Africa, Jumia’s earnings indicate

Jumia, the pan-African e-commerce company (and sole tech company based on the continent listed on the NYSE), released its first-quarter financial performance today. The company’s results include

Selina raises $150M to dish out flexible loans that leverage home equity

For many of us, our home is by far our biggest asset, and in the world of fintech, that’s led to a logical extension: when you need money, borrow against that biggest asset. Today, a London fint

Sunday competitor Qlub emerges with $17M seed round from Cherry and Point Nine

Our behavior at restaurants and venues has changed massively in the last two years because of the pandemic, but many of us have realized the huge advantages of being able to order via phones from the

Morocco’s Chari valued at $100M in bridge round as it looks to pilot BNPL services

Moroccan B2B e-commerce and retail startup Chari confirmed to TechCrunch that it has secured a bridge round at a $100 million valuation. The bridge round welcomed new investors Khwarizmi Ventures, Air

Arive raises $20M for an instant delivery service beyond groceries and essentials

Instant purchase and delivery of food and other essentials was one of the big bubbles of opportunity in the world of e-commerce in the last year, with dozens of startups big and small emerging and sco

African tech took center stage in 2021

Two years ago, the African tech ecosystem saw newfound attention from global players that translated to the continent’s best year of receiving venture capital. From varying sources, it is estimated

Alibaba’s Southeast Asia arm Lazada hits 130M annual consumers

Alibaba has always aspired to bring its e-commerce service to customers outside China. Its strategy is multi-thronged. The giant’s house-developed AliExpress has found success in Russia in recen

Flink, the Berlin-based instant grocery startup, is now valued at $2.85B after raising $750M in a round led by DoorDash

Instant grocery delivery continues to be a very frothy market, but today comes news of a major funding round for one player in it that investors believe will still be standing after the hype has died

Jumia posts revenue and order gains, but compounding losses drag its stock lower

Pan-African e-commerce company Jumia released its third-quarter financial performance today, detailing a mix of expected and surprising results. When TechCrunch discussed the company’s Q2 2020 finan

Berlin’s Razor Group raises $125M at a $1B+ valuation for a platform to buy and scale third-party Amazon merchants

Companies snapping up merchants selling on Amazon to build in more e-commerce economies of scale into the model are on a rapid pace of growth at the moment, fueled in no small part by giant infusions

Meal planner startup Kitchenful raises $1.9M from VentureFriends, Goodwater Capital and Jabbar

With the pandemic turning us into delivery experts, consumers have also switched on to meal kits in droves, given that it combines both delivery and home cooking. But many meal kits can be inflexible.

European point of sale provider SumUp acquires customer loyalty startup Fivestars for $317M

SumUp, a European-based competitor to Square, PayPal/iZettle and others that provide mobile-powered card readers and other sales technology to merchants and small businesses, has made an acquisition i

Chari, a Moroccan startup digitizing mom and pop stores, raises $5M at $70M valuation

If there’s a sector that has seen the biggest uptick in the number of startups and venture capital in emerging markets since the start of last year, it has to be the digitization of mom and pop

Jumia’s Q2 results show moderate growth, rising spend and continued losses

African e-commerce giant Jumia today reported its second-quarter financial performance. In the wake of its earnings reports, Jumia’s shares climbed 3.38% to $21.99 per share with a market cap of

Brazilian digital auto marketplace InstaCarro revs up with $23M in funding

InstaCarro, a digital marketplace that connects used car sellers to dealers in Brazil, has raised $23 million in a Series B round of funding. Notably, U.S.-based firms co-led the investment, including

Lollipop AI launches online grocery marketplace where you can build your own recipes

As I’ve taken to online grocery shopping over the pandemic, I’ve always wondered why supermarkets didn’t offer simple ‘recipe’ features that would have automatically collected items for

Could Claap, an asynchronous video meetings platform, end the tyranny of Zoom calls?

Because of the pandemic, we’re all a lot more familiar with remote working than we used to be, whether we like it or not. But the remote tools of the pre-pandemic era — Slack, Trello, Zoom, As
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