Author: Mike Butcher

Unifonic, dubbed the Twilio of emerging markets, closes M Series A round Those of you familiar with the incredible rise of Twilio, which came along to utterly disrupt the communications world, will be interested to hear that another player plans to do the same, but this time in the staid and tricky area of emerging markets. Unifonic, which has been dubbed “the Twilio of emerging markets” has today closed a $21M Series A funding round led by Saudi Technology Ventures (STV), and the emerging market specialist fund Endeavor Catalyst, which…

European late-stage FinTech startups get a boost with new Corviglia fund In a boost to late-stage funding for FinTech startups looking to scale-up without having to leave Europe, what claims to be the largest growth equity fund for Fintech in Europe launches today. The Corviglia Capital Fund will be deployed from Luxembourg and has secured $250M as a first closing for its first three years of operations, with the aim being to raise a total of $500M. The fund has been started by two former fund managers Petr Šmída and…

Founders Factory expands its corporate-backed accelerator to Africa Founders Factory out of London is a startup accelerator and incubator which has taken the older US-inspired startup acceleration model and put a European slant on it by going in deep with corporates, who often flounder in the space. After some success out of the UK you would expect them to expand to big markets like the US or Asia, but instead, they have skipped the obvious route and are now branching out into the emerging markets of the African continent. It’s…

Interiors startup Clippings raises .4M Series B with Advance Venture Partners Back in April we saw that eporta, a London-based B2B interiors marketplace startup, had raised $8 million in a Series A funding round led by US investor Canvas Ventures. Eport has digitized the catalogues of furnishing manufacturers and allowed businesses to order direct, cutting out the middle-men. Now London is continuing its obsession with interior decoration startups with the news that Clippings has raised a Series B round of funding, raising $15.4 million. Advance Venture Partners (AVP ) lead…

Announcing the agenda for TechCrunch Startup Battlefield MENA 2018 in Beirut We’re excited to head to Beirut, Lebanon, on October 3rd for TechCrunch Startup Battlefield MENA 2018. Yes, we’re bringing our premier startup pitch competition to the Middle East / North Africa, and as well as launching 15 of the hottest startups in MENA on stage for the first time, we’ll also be joined by some leading lights of the scene. Tickets to this event — our first in this part of the world — cost $29 (including VAT), and…

Vezeeta, the leading MENA healthcare startup, secures M Series C led by STV One of the major structural issues in the Middle East is the lack of consistent healthcare across the region. So this market was clearly waiting to be disrupted by technology. In 2011 Vezeeta came along to change that. Launched initially in Cairo as a sort of “Uber for Ambulances”, it has since expanded to cover a wide area of the MENA population across several cities, and now provides a much wider range of health services to both…

Committed to privacy, Snips founder wants to take on Alexa and Google, with blockchain Earlier this year we saw the headlines of how the users of popular voice assistants like Alexa and Siri and continue to face issues when their private data is compromised, or even sent to random people. In May it was reported that Amazon’s Alexa recorded a private conversation and sent it to a random contact. Amazon insists its Echo devices aren’t always recording, but it did confirm the audio was sent. The story could be a…

Insurtech startup Setoo closes .3M Series A from Kamet, AXA’s accelerator Given all the scams of the last few years, consumers are increasingly unwilling to spend money on what they see as irrelevant insurance products. That means many business have lost out on revenue. Setoo is a UK startup which solves this problem, by helping online businesses to build and integrate simple insurance products tailor-made to the customer and automatically embedded into the customer journey. Today Setoo announces it has closed an €8million ($9.3million) Series A funding round, bringing the…

Middle East investors at our Startup Battlefield, Beirut, October 3rd – Grab your tickets now TechCrunch will soon hold it’s first ever Startup Battlefield MENA competition dedicated to the MENA region, in Beirut, Lebanon, on October 3rd. The event will showcase the launch of 15 of the hottest startups in MENA on stage for the first time. We’ll also be joined by some of the leading investments firms in MENA. If you want to be in the same room, you’d better grab your tickets now. Here, we showcase just some…