Category: ICT

Moove takes in $76M equity, debt from Mubadala and BlackRock at a $550M valuation

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Moove, an African mobility fintech that provides vehicle financing to drivers of ride-hailing platforms like Uber and other gig networks, has raised $76 million in new funding.

It includes $28 million in equity from new and existing investors led by Mubadala Investment Company, $10 million in venture debt from funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, and $38 million in previously undisclosed funds raised during the prior 12 months, Moove said in a statement.

The news is coming a year after Moove raised a $105 million Series A2 financing ($65 million equity and $40 million debt). The company, which closed its $23 million Series A round in 2021, has employed several types of debt financing since inception from British International Investment, Franklin Templeton Investments and ABSA.

Moove has raised $325 million ($150 million in equity and over $175 million in debt). This latest financing takes Moove’s valuation to $550 million.

Founded in 2020 in Lagos, Nigeria, by co-CEOs Ladi Delano and Jide Odunsi, Moove, via revenue-based financing, provides flexible options for drivers who want to get into the business of ride-hailing or other gig economy services without having to borrow from car owners or take bank loans to finance these cars bought from dealerships.

Drivers sign up on the platform and, once verified, are trained and sign contracts with Moove to access loans to buy or rent cars. The company gets these drivers on Uber (its exclusive partner across Africa for ride-hailing) or other mobility platforms, including Glovo, Kobo360 and Swvl, as gig drivers.

Moove then deducts weekly rental fees from their earnings before transferring the balance to their accounts. The loans are between 12 and 48 months, and when drivers repay them (at an 8% to 13% annual interest rate), they own the cars, according to the three-year-old startup.

Since its launch, the Lagos-born and Amsterdam-headquartered startup has expanded its operations to 13 cities across Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The countries where Moove has a presence include Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, the U.K., India, and the UAE, demonstrating what the founders informed TechCrunch on the startup’s expansion plans during its last pricing round in March 2022.

“We have managed to build a Nigerian solution for what we now know is a global problem,” Delano said. “And that is exciting for us because not only do we have the opportunity to help solve the lack of access to vehicle financing problems for mobility entrepreneurs in Africa, but now we have the opportunity to take this Nigerian-born solution to the rest of the world.”

Moove intends to use the investment to expand and consolidate its position in these markets, where it remains Uber’s largest vehicle supply partner across EMEA. Moove claims to be India’s second-largest vehicle partner and operates the largest EV fleet by supply hours on the Uber platform in the UAE, despite launching only four months ago.

The mobility fintech, which works with 15,000 customers who have completed more than 22 million trips, said it has experienced a 17x revenue growth since its Series A in 2021. Moove has annual recurring revenues of $90 million, according to the Financial Times.

Delano, in a statement, alludes to Moove’s profitability in some markets. According to the co-CEO, the Mubadala-led financing will help Moove double down on already profitable markets, including the UAE, India, the U.K., and South Africa, “as well as continuing to invest in our customer experience and accelerate our product development to deliver group-wide profitability within the next 12 months.”

In retrospect, it could be argued that Moove’s actions over the past couple of months, which have raised eyebrows, were geared toward meeting this target. Moove, which employs 500 people, conducted a company-wide “dismissal” in December, affecting an unknown number of employees. In May, a report detailed complaints of unfair working arrangements in Nigeria where Moove impounded drivers’ cars for nonpayment of loans.

Unsurprisingly, these reports haven’t deterred Moove’s investors, who now have an appetite for profitable companies or those that can show a clear path there, from pumping more money into the self-described mobility fintech. For lead investor Mubadala, this is its first investment in an African-founded upstart, and Faris Sohail Al Mazrui, its head of ventures and growth, will join Moove’s advisory board. “Moove has built a highly scalable tech-enabled platform to serve mobility entrepreneurs globally by providing them access to credit and other financial services previously unavailable to them. This is a hugely underbanked and underserved market that we believe has significant long-term potential,” he said of his firm’s investment in Moove, which also has other global backers, including Speedinvest and Left Lane Capital.

 

US FinTech Squeeze.com acquires Youtility to revolutionise comparison market

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US-based tech platform Squeeze has acquired Youtility, a UK technology start-up, in a bid to offer a unique embedded experience for both businesses and their customers.

The collaboration hopes to combine the consumer-facing expertise of Squeeze with the market-leading B2B services of Youtility, to bring about a transformative change in the financial sector.

Squeeze is a rapidly growing platform dedicated to helping consumers manage, evaluate, and save on their recurring insurance contracts. Youtility, based in the UK, operates a market-leading B2B API platform. It collaborates with banks and fintech companies to deliver integrated home finance management services, providing customers with a streamlined way to manage their household finances.

The move comes in response to a report from The Office for National Statistics, which claims that there has been a significant rise in UK household energy bills, leading to a growing need for banks and FinTech platforms to support their customers in better managing and saving money.

Elias Janetis, Founder and CEO of Squeeze, said “I am excited that our expert team and unique technology can help UK consumers to make more informed decisions and to save money on their home finances. Our combined technologies will allow banks to embed essential money saving actions and help all customers, not just the financially savvy, bring about a new era of price comparison to the UK market.”

Tyler Randolph Boyd, Chief Strategy Officer and Lead of the newly combined group, noted “By combining the consumer facing expertise of Squeeze with the market leading B2B services of Youtility, we will offer a one-of-a-kind embedded experience both for businesses and their consumers.”

Youtility co-founders Will Kostoris and Charlie Quigley, said “We are excited to bring together the Squeeze and Youtility technologies and accelerate the businesses development by harnessing Squeeze’s expertise from the US market. We are thrilled to join forces with such a strong team and to align our collective missions to help people save money on their largest payments year after year.”

Prepaid cards expand in India

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Indian fintech Pepper Money is collaborating with the National Payments Corporation of India and merchant technology company Pine Labs to issue a prepaid card via the national Rupay payment network.

The product, called the Pepper Money Dreams Card, is expected to reach more than a million consumers within the next year.

The card is designed for smaller towns and rural areas, where financial services are not as accessible as in India’s larger cities. Pepper Money will partner with about 100 local businesses in fashion, travel, electronics, dining and health care at launch.

The NPCI estimates the Indian prepaid card market is about $119 billion and is expanding at a compound annual growth rate of 36%.

India’s government has encouraged expansion of non-cash payments for years, often through controversial steps such as removing huge amounts of paper money from circulation and taking a hard line on U.S. payment firms that could cut into Rupay’s share.

U.K. sends out 146 crypto marketing warnings in one day

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The Financial Conduct Authority’s crypto asset promotion rules went into effect on Monday, and the agency had a busy day — issuing 146 alerts in 24 hours, with firms being given an opportunity to engage with the FCA to correct marketing before more formal steps are taken.

The rules mandate that firms marketing cryptocurrencies or related assets must be authorized and registered with the FCA, or have their marketing programs approved by a firm that the FCA has authorized.

The promotions must be “clear and not misleading” and labeled with risk warnings about the dangers of investing in cryptocurrency.

“These changes bring crypto assets in line with other high-risk investments,” the FCA said in a release.

Elon Musk’s biographer says ‘nothing hurt him more’ than his relationship with Amber Heard

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  • Elon Musk’s biographer said the most painful thing in the billionaire’s life was his relationship with Amber Heard.

  • Walter Isaacson said on Kara Swisher’s podcast that “nothing hurt him more than that relationship.”

  • Isaacson said the relationship was fraught with “storm and turmoil” that was “part of the attraction.”

Elon Musk’s biographer said the billionaire’s relationship with the actor Amber Heard hurt him the most — even more than Musk’s fraught relationship with his father.

“The storm and turmoil that both sides tell me about, this is not a matter of dispute, that was part of the attraction,” Walter Isaacson said on the latest episode of the “On With Kara Swisher” podcast. “Part of the theme of this life is this person is attracted to drama and storm. When things are calm, he surges — he buys Twitter or whatever. So, this is true of the relationship with Amber. Nothing hurt him more than that relationship.”

Musk and a lawyer for Heard did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Musk and Heard dated on and off after bonding at the 2016 Met Gala. They took their relationship public in April 2017 before announcing their breakup a few months later. They continued seeing each other after their split before breaking up again in 2018.

Isaacson spent two years shadowing Musk for the biography, which hit shelves last week.

The book described a “psychological turmoil” in many of Musk’s romantic relationships. It recounted Musk’s and Heard’s first meeting: She asked if she could visit SpaceX a year after the two worked on the action film “Machete Kills,” Heard as a star and Musk as a consultant.

Isaacson also documented the explosive fights in their relationship, writing, “She and Musk would stay up all night fighting, and then he would not be able to get up until the afternoon.”

In the biography, Heard said she loved Musk “very much” but that “Elon loves fire and sometimes it burns him.”

When Isaacson asked Musk to explain his tumultuous romantic history, the billionaire replied, “I am often a fool, but especially for love.”

The Canadian musician Grimes, Musk’s ex with whom he shares three children, told Isaacson for the biography that Musk “associates love with being mean or abusive” in part because of his relationship with his father, Errol Musk.

Musk has said his father bullied and demeaned him throughout his childhood. In 2017, he told Rolling Stone his father was a “terrible human being” who had done “almost every evil thing you could possibly think of.”

Errol Musk has denied berating his son.

Musk’s first wife, Justine Wilson, to whom he was married from 2000 to 2008, has spoken about their relationship.

“There is a combative element to him,” she told Isaacson. “I don’t think you can be in a relationship with Elon and not argue.”

“When you’re from a dysfunctional background or have a brain wired like his,” Wilson told Isaacson, “intensity takes the place of intimacy.”

Apple to update iPhone 12 in France after concerns over radiation

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Apple will update the iPhone 12 in France after regulators raised concerns over electromagnetic radiation emitted by the devices, according to the country’s digital minister and the firm.

The announcement came on Friday, after France on Tuesday ordered a halt to sales of the device, released in 2020, after finding that the model emitted more electromagnetic waves than permitted.

“Apple has assured me that it will implement an update for the iPhone 12 in the next few days,” said Digital Minister Jean-Noel Barrot in a statement to the AFP news agency.

The firm and Barrot insisted there was no danger to public health from the radiation.

“This is related to a specific testing protocol used by French regulators and not a safety concern,” Apple said in a statement, adding that the device complied with rules on emissions all around the world.

“We will issue a software update for users in France to accommodate the protocol used by French regulators.”

On Tuesday, Barrot gave the United States tech giant two weeks to issue an update to its phone, which was coming to the end of its career as a front-line Apple product.

He said the agency in charge of testing, the ANFR, would quickly assess the update and he would then decide whether to lift the ban on sales.

The World Health Organization has said several studies have been conducted in the field and “no adverse health effects have been established as being caused by mobile phone use”.

South Korean tech bosses fret about a flood of cheap Chinese robot waiters

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South Korean restaurants are using AI robots to cope with labor shortages.

Robots made in China are vastly cheaper than those from South Korea. There are fears that the cut-price competition could hit Korea’s robotics industry.

Tech executives in South Korea are concerned that a flood of cheap Chinese robots is undermining their own attempts to sell their own devices, a report says.

South Korea has embraced robot waiters in restaurants as a response to labor shortages caused in part by a demographic crisis.

Data from the Korean Association of Robot Industry shared with the Financial Times showed there were 5,000 server robots in Korean restaurants.

According to an April report in the Korea Times, one owner placed tablets on every table in his restaurants to eliminate the need for waiters.

During the pandemic, Reuters reported that South Korean tech company KT Corp started selling “Aglio Kim” – a trolley-like AI robot to restaurants.

It can carry food for as many as four tables on each trip, Lee Young-jin of KT told the news agency.

However, tech executives in South Korea told the FT they’re now concerned the market is being flooded by cheap Chinese robots, stymying the country’s own robotics makers.

Server tech has become more sophisticated in recent years, moving beyond tablets on tables to fully autonomous robots collecting orders and delivering food.

One Chinese-made serving robot costs 10 million to 30 million won ($7,500 to $22,600) – about a fifth of the price of Korean equivalents, the newspaper reported.

One unnamed executive told the FT said they were trying to win the battle with better-quality robots, “but this is not easy.”

Korean companies are looking for ways to compete with cheap Chinese goods more broadly as well. Aju Korea Daily reported in May that South Korean startups were offering restaurants robots to rent for 300,000 won a month.

However, some in the industry think subsidies will be needed to compete with Chinese imports.

 

Culled from the Business Insider

Bridgewater says ChatGPT passed its investment associate test

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The bot was in the 80th percentile of performance, around the same level as a first-year associate at the hedge fund.

The co-CIO of Bridgewater Associates seems pretty impressed with the investment acumen of OpenAI’s ChatGPT artificial intelligence tool.

Greg Jensen, co-CIO of the world’s biggest hedge fund, told Bloomberg that ChatGPT was able to pass its investment associate test, and that the power of the buzzy AI chatbot is like having “millions” of junior staffers working all at once.

Speaking on the Odd Lots podcast, Jensen – who’s flagged AI as a major interest for Bridgewater well before ChatGPT’s viral craze – said the hedge fund was now experimenting with machine learning AI in its trading strategies.

Bots like ChatGPT have already performed well on Bridgewater’s internal tests for investments associates, Jensen said. ChatGPT 3.5, the most well-known version of the AI large language model, scored at the level of a first-year associate at the firm, landing in the 80th percentile of all test takers.

Though the chatbot isn’t perfect, its strong performance reflects a significant amount of brainpower, Jensen said, who equated ChatGPT’s abilities to having an army of investment associates.

“Because all of sudden if you have an 80th percentile investment associate, technologically, you have millions of them at once. And if you have the ability to control their hallucinations and their errors by having a rigorous statistical backdrop, you could do a tremendous amount at a rapid rate. And that’s really what we’re doing in our lab and proving out that process can work,” he said.

Major issues largely revolve around ChatGPT’s tendency to give inaccurate information, Jensen said, calling some of the bots’ answers outright “hallucinations.”

He suggested the AI bot was unlikely to fully replace human employees anytime soon, though Bridgewater is working on a fund primarily run by “machine learning techniques,” Jensen said, adding that the firm was trying to pair ChatGPT with other statistical and AI models to improve its predictive capabilities.

“You still need – for as far foreseeable future – you’re going to want people around that, working on those things,” Jensen said, noting there was a greater need for “flexible generalists” who were able to utilize “whatever tools are necessary” to meet a goal.

Wall Street has been eyeing ChatGPT’s role as a potential investment advisor, though most experts agree more work needs to be done on the language model before it dispenses truly reliable investment advice.

At the moment, the bot can only generate “first-level” responses and is incapable of applying knowledge to specific situations, according to Morningstar Investment Management’s CIO.

EU financial sector resilient, but fragile, European Central Bank official says

Paradise Erhuvwu

 

May 31 (UPI) — Efforts to control inflation in the European economy run the risk of creating “vulnerabilities” in the banking sector, where conditions remain fragile, the vice president of the European Central Bank said Wednesday.

The ECB highlighted potential economic risks in the May 2023 Financial Stability Review published Wednesday.

Concerns about the health of the global financial sector emerged in the wake of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in California in March. Looming fears about a repeat of the recession from the mid-2000s spread to other financial institutions, leading to a shotgun wedding of sorts between troubled Credit Suisse and Swiss investment bank UBS.

Luis de Guindos, vice president of the European Central Bank, said Wednesday that efforts to keep prices stable are essential for a healthy market, though that could result in some collateral damage.

“(A)s we tighten monetary policy to reduce high inflation, this can reveal vulnerabilities in the financial system,” he said. “It is critical that we monitor such vulnerabilities and fully implement the banking union to keep them in check.”

Banking officials told U.S. lawmakers there were subject to a contagion effect, with depositors pulling billions of dollars out of their accounts in a matter of hours amid fears of a broad-based collapse. But officials weren’t convinced.

“The simplest explanation is best,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. “It is first and foremost the bankers’ fault that the banks crashed.”

In Europe, ECB President Christine Lagarde expressed concern that downside risks from “recent financial market tensions ” raised doubts about the bank’s estimate that headline inflation would fall from around 8% to 2% by 2025.

“Some of this uncertainty will recede as the fallout from recent events in financial markets becomes clearer,” she said. “But faced with overlapping shocks and shifting geopolitics, the level of uncertainty will most likely remain high.”

So far, however, her deputy said banks in the EU have been resilient to the stresses witnessed in the U.S. and Swiss financial sectors, through policymakers need to ensure that resilience is preserved.

Banks, it was suggested, may need to set aside more funds to cover any losses and manage their credit risks appropriately.

 

Digitalise borders to unlock Africa’s full potential

Paradise Erhuvwu

Africa’s immense potential to become a global powerhouse is undeniable.  It has all of the ingredients including a market of 1.2 billion consumers (rising to 1.7bn by 2030) and a combined GDP worth US$2.5 trillion.  So what is holding it back?

The African Union’s (AU) members have all indicated their support for and recognition of the benefits of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area, the Single Africa Air Transport Market and the Free Movement of Persons Protocol.  All of them are intended to unlock free trade, tourism, economic opportunities and promote widespread prosperity across the continent.

At the SITA Borders Management Africa Summit in Nairobi this month, speakers and delegates from governments across the continent identified and discussed solutions to resolving the biggest hinderance to these AU flagship programmes realising their full potential, i.e. efficient borders to enable the frictionless flows of people and goods.

In our deliberations we were continually reminded that it is easier and faster to transport mobile phones from China to Africa than to move a few bags of maize across an African border post.  At the root of this are inconsistencies in the criteria and processes applied by immigration and customs authorities for issuing visas, travel authorisations, goods import and transit permits, the use of unsuitable and often incompatible equipment and the vulnerability to agile international organised crime and terrorism.  All of these have to be tackled with shrinking budgets and diminishing resources.

Therein lies the rub: For economies to grow and a free trade area to work, governments need to balance protecting their countries from trafficking, terrorism, pandemics, and crime while making it easier to move people and goods across their borders and at the same time respecting personal data privacy and its underpinning legislation.

The good news is that proven digital border management technology and emerging digital identities put Africa in pole position to lead the way. A key advantage for Africa is that it faces fewer legacy challenges in the digital space and in many ways, it can move faster. The digital transformation of borders will be inevitable if the continent is to achieve its ambition.

Recognized benefits
Airlines and airports understand the potential of digitalizing border processes. At the coal face of international travel, the industry has long recognized the need for digital immigration processes. The challenges of COVID accelerated this trend. For example, SITA’s 2022 Air Transport IT Insights showed that 75% of airline executives will ​invest in passenger biometric identity solutions by 2025. This means passengers will be identified by a simple facial scan, making the identification process fast and secure.

However, it can’t be done by one industry in isolation. It needs government and broader industry support.

SITA is leading the way
SITA, the global air transport industry-owned IT and solutions provider, is leading this push. Over the past 30 years, SITA has helped 70 governments – including South Africa and Egypt – make their border crossings faster and more secure.  We pioneered what is now the global standard for Advance Passenger Information processing and we are helping governments digitalise key immigration processes so that they can be completed ahead of travel.  This helps governments to effectively extend their borders and assess who enters their country long before they arrive. Travelers, on the other hand, only have to complete a simple check on arrival.
The benefit of this approach has been shown to work time and again, particularly at big sporting events such as the World Cup. We helped South Africa in 2010, Brazil in 2014, and Qatar in 2022 to manage the vast influx of visitors.

Digital identities will take this to a new level. Driven by the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization, which sets global passport standards, the industry is shaping a new digital identity that will replace physical documents such as identity cards or passports. A key driver is that holders will choose what data they would like to share with whom. It is privacy by design. These digital identities can be used at the airport but also at land and sea borders or other touchpoints, such as hotels or major events, as we did in Qatar for the World Cup. All that is needed is a simple scan of your face a biometric touchpoint or on your mobile phone. We see these digital identities being extended to goods and services.

Together these technologies will reshape how borders are managed.

Making free trade a reality
The technology exists today to make an African free trade area a reality. It allows the balancing of protectionist measures to keep national borders safe with a more welcoming face to visitors. It is scalable. And it is inclusive, allowing all elements of public life to be managed from a single identity.
With the right support from governments across Africa, we can pull many levers to unlock free trade and tourism across the continent. Policy and intergovernmental co-operation the two most obvious but digitalization must surely be essential among them.

The writer is the Senior Vice President, SITA at Borders

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