Author: Staff Writer

As from today, August 14 2019, Gokada will not be available. The app will be down and the pilots will be off the road. It is shutting down, so says CEO Fahim Saleh. Hold on….Not for long though. This is sort out some of the operational issues that the CEO…

The DOEN Foundation (Stichting DOEN), a Dutch fund supporting green, socially-inclusive and creative initiatives that contribute to a better and cleaner world, has joined forces with Seedstars, the leading emerging market startup community and investor. They are launching the DOEN Land Restoration Prize, in order to find and award the…

Verve, a leading payment technology card and card business in Africa, held its first transaction event in New York yesterday, signifying the acceptance of the Verve Card globally. This was made possible in partnership with Discover Global Network, the payments brand of Discover. This means that Verve cardholders can now…

Naspers has led a $125 million fundraise for Meesho, an Indian Online Social Commerce marketplace. Other participants include Facebook and existing investors SAIF, Sequoia, Shunwei Capital, RPS and Venture Highway. Former Vodafone Group CEO Sir Arun Sarin also participated in the round. Meesho is the leading social commerce online marketplace in India…

As a group admin, have you ever imagined managing users who send too many messages in a group? Well instant messaging app, Telegram, has introduced a feature called “Slow Mode” which gives the group admin the power to control how often a member could send a message in the group.…

Samsung Electronics has unveiled the latest in the potential of the of smartphone cameras. It has introduced the first mobile image sensor in the industry to go beyond 100 million pixels – the 108 megapixel (Mp) Samsung ISOCELL Bright HMX. The Samsung ISOCELL Bright HMX is the result of a joint collaboration between…

Pakistan-based transportation startup, Airlift, has raised $2.2 million in a recently concluded seed round. According to Airlift’s co-founder and CEO Usman Gul in a discussion with menabytes, the round was co-led by one of Pakistan’s largest conglomerates Fatima Group (through its VC arm) and Indus Valley Capital, a Pakistan-focused VC founded by…

Last week Thursday, eleven-year-old Egyptian electronic payments company Fawry, went public on the Egyptian Exchange (EGX). It was the first IPO in Egypt for this year and it was oversubscribed. Listed at a price of EGP 6.46, it soared 30% to close on the first day of trading to give…

Transsion Holdings, the Chinese company behind three popular African phone brands – Tecno, Infinix and itel – has confirmed that it is going to list in an Initial Public Offering (IPO) on Shanghai’s STAR Market. STAR is the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s new Nasdaq-style board for tech stocks that also went live in July…

TechAdvance, a Nigerian payment application development company has raised $1m from Bahrain-based energy investment company Lamar Holding. The investment will be used to support TechAdvance’s strategy to substantially expand its global expansion. Founded in 2009 by the CEO Edmund Olotu, TechAdvance focuses on developing and deploying niche payment companies to serve the needs…

A couple of days before the Samsung Unpacked event, Samsung launched the Galaxy Watch Active2. The Samsung Galaxy Watch Active2 is the latest addition to the Galaxy smartwatch portfolio. The Samsung Galaxy Watch Active2 is purposefully designed with new, intuitive, and refined features to bring more customization to consumers’ personal…

Apple’s analytics dashboard for artists, Apple Music for Artists, is out of beta and now available for all artists. The data analytics platform was launched and made available to a selected few in beta stage in June 2018. It provides insight into the listening habits of fans, highlighting the number of…

Apple has now agreed to roll out a macOS bug bounty alongside its iOS bug bounty program. Three years ago it introduced a bug bounty program for iOS alone. iCloud, iOS, tvOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and macOS will now be covered. This announcement was made by the head of security engineering and…

Health diagnostic startup, Ilaya Health, announced that it has raised $735,000 from group of angel investors and venture capital (VC) firms including Chinese fund ShakaVC ,Chandaria Capital and Villgro Kenya. According to the Nairobi based company, the fund will be used to grow its operations in Kenya and to build a “flexible” technology platform to manage and…

Though the Samsung Unpacked 2019 event was more or less overtaken by the unveiling of the Samsung Galaxy Note10 and Note10+, Samsung also launched a Qualcomm powered laptop called the Samsung Galaxy Book S. Galaxy Book S offers uncompromising performance-powered by the Snapdragon 8cx compute platform; the world’s first 7…

French based Vivendi Group has entered an agreement with Rwanda Development Board (RDB) to invest in Kigali Cultural Village (KCV) to boost entertainment in the country. The Kigali Cultural Village is a $40 million project aimed at building an economically viable eco-tourism and cultural village facility within the City of…

Samsung launched the Galaxy Note10 and 10+ at the Galaxy Unpacked 2019 event in Brooklyn yesterday. Here are some of the notable features of the new line of premium smartphones that combines elegant design with powerful performance and productivity tools. Purposeful Design The Samsung Galaxy Note10 comes in two sizes:…

Disney has announced that it would be entering big into the streaming wars with the launch of a bundle including Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu. And this bundle will be available as from November 12, 2019 for $12.99 per month. This bundle offering is certainly cheaper than or on par with streaming…

Hitherto, Google Assistant has only been able to read out SMS messages, with third-party app conversations needing to be manually viewed instead. This is changing as Google has updated Assistant to read out replies from third-party apps such as Telegram, WhatsApp, Slack, Discord, GroupMe, and so on. According to Android Police, Google…

Google shut down its Trips app, Google Trips yesterday August 5. It is moving Google Trips app features in Google Search and Google Maps. It introduced the app in September 2016. Google Trips is a personalized tour guide in your pocket. Each trip contains key categories of information, including day plans,…