👨🏿‍🚀TechCabal Day-to-day – Visa’s first African innovation studio

8 APRIL, 2022

CRYPTO MARKET

QUICK FIRE 🔥 WITH DANIEL JUNOWICZ

Daniel Junowicz is the RVP EMEA & Strategic Initiatives, at AppsFlyer, the global leader in mobile attribution. Prior to joining AppsFlyer, Daniel worked in the manufacturing sector in China for over 6 years. In 2014, Daniel brought his passion to AppsFlyer because the first employee on the Chinese group.

Holding a double BA in Commercial Administration and Far Jap Stories, Daniel is moreover fluent in Hebrew, Spanish, Chinese and Portuguese.

Expose your job to a five-year-extinct

I merit firms grow their mobile apps. 

What’s something you wish you knew earlier to your profession/life?

The significance of encouragement and giving compliments. 

When I was younger, I was very driven in direction of execution, and on the entire omitted one of the most necessary softer talents that are moreover wished. In the raze, I learned that you’re in a position to sort some distance more when of us are liked by their teammates and executives, as an different of specializing in execution finest. 

What’s basically the most promising thing about tech in Africa?

The scoot of innovation—it’s a younger, dynamic, thrilling continent with colossal likely for increase. 

What’s one false impression firms/startups develop about buyer/enterprise privacy?

That the correct system to lift a huge buyer experience is by having access to and sharing user-level recordsdata. The two aren’t mutually attractive—that it is likely you’ll quiet lift outstanding experiences with out compromising the privacy of your prospects. 

What’s the greatest barrier to Web3 on the continent?

Education. Frequent employ of crypto and other web3 merchandise will both require a smarter level of economic and technological literacy across the fashioned inhabitants, or the merchandise themselves will need to lift a less advanced user experience. 

This isn’t simply restricted to Africa even though. Frequent training of crypto and web3 is something that applies globally. 

What (singular) achievement are you most contented with?

I joined a small startup of 20 of us and helped the firm enter and become a diversity of markets. On the present time we are 1,500 proud employees and market leaders in all of the markets I helped to penetrate. 

What’s something you admire doing that you’re dreadful at. And what’s something you the truth is carry out no longer admire doing that you’re huge at. 

I’m dreadful at occupy yet as a supervisor I’m on the entire required to put together executive summaries, which I’m thoroughly okay with! 

I’m quiet no longer passe to speaking and presenting in entrance of an viewers, even though I’ve been doing it for various years and usually web certain solutions.

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VISA’S FIRST AFRICAN INNOVATION STUDIO

World payments firm Visa has opened a brand unusual Innovation Studio in Nairobi, Kenya. 

This facility will lend a hand the sub-Saharan Africa plot and joins a network of innovation centres operated by Visa since 2016, in cities including London, Dubai and Singapore. The Nairobi studio is the first in Africa and sixth globally.

The unusual facility helps Visa’s dedication to selling innovation and growing alternatives for purchasers and fintech companions to co-web market-relevant fee and commerce solutions for the length of the plot.

Aida Diarra, Senior vp and head of Visa in Sub-Saharan Africa, mentioned the studio will lend a hand in growing the Visa market in the plot by issuing digital and bodily Visa cards to its purchasers.

Visa has beforehand passe its existing innovation hubs to occupy merchandise for the African market, including a collaboration with Nigerian fintech Paga to map unusual merchant acceptance solutions keen QR codes and NFC skills. It moreover partnered with Kenya’s M-Pesa to permit M-Pesa’s 24 million customers and 173,000 local merchants to be linked to Visa’s 61 million merchants and its more than 3 billion cards.

An influx of innovation centres 

All the scheme in which thru Africa, local and multinational corporations, as properly as governments, beget been launching innovation centres as a system to map unusual merchandise thru collaborations and to remain globally aggressive. 

There are Microsoft’s African Pattern Centres in Kenya and Lagos. In 2021, Huawei moreover launched its map to web an innovation and learn centre in Tunisia. 

In Kenya, organisations reminiscent of Cisco and Philips moreover bustle same innovation studios in Nairobi, whereas the Kenyan government is constructing a skills city, Konza City, to pressure innovation in the nation.

The originate of Visa’s first African innovation studio and others serves as a enhance to the African tech ecosystem because it’ll abet the creation, constructing, and implementation of unusual tips.

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TC INSIGHTS: FUNDING TRACKER

This week, Egyptian e-properly being startup O7 Remedy raised a $2.1 million seed spherical in a spherical led by Hikma Ventures, with the participation of C-Ventures, Lotus Ventures, and diverse angel merchants.

Listed below are the other deals for the week:

• South Africa’s SmartWage, an HR and communications skills startup, raised $2 million in an oversubscribed seed funding spherical from merchants including LoftyInc Capital Administration, Creator Collective Capital, and Penrose Capital, along with angels from Naspers, Dimension Data, Investec, and Standard Monetary institution. 

• Xpovi, a robo-advisory startup primarily based mostly in Egypt, closed a $300,000 pre-seed funding spherical from a group of strategic angel merchants.

• Egyptian e-grocery marketplace ON Market bought $215,000 in pre-seed funding from a bunch of angel merchants to extra develop its operations in Cairo, Alexandria, Tanta, Mansoura, and more than one other cities across the nation. 

• PayMint, an Egyptian fintech startup secured a seven-resolve US greenback seed funding from AUR Fintech – a subsidiary of AUR Capital to merit its expansion plans.

• Nigerian peek-to-peek (P2P) lending startup Sycamore closed an undisclosed seed funding spherical because it looks to develop its operations. The spherical used to be led by US-primarily based mostly VC company White Hibiscus Capital (WHC) and system lots of other deepest merchants. 

• Locstat, an AI startup primarily based mostly in Cape City, South Africa secured undisclosed funding spherical from Grindstone Ventures for extra increase.

That’s it for this week! Observe Africa’s startup funding in precise-time using our product, DealFlow. 

Apply us on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more updates.

EVENT: DIGITAL IDENTITY MATTERS

How will we leverage digital id in constructing a solid launch finance infrastructure for Africa?

Commence finance is pivotal to the scheme in which forward for financial services and products in Africa because it presents well-known likely no longer simply in reaching the unbanked however moreover in keeping them in a machine that’s safer and more clear.

On the 22nd of April, for the fourth edition of #DigitalIDMatters, we’ll be speaking with Ope Adeoye, Founder and CEO of OnePipe, on the role of digital id in enabling launch finance in Africa. Ope has intensive experience in launch banking and moreover presently serves as a Trustee at Commence Know-how Foundation, helping with advocacy for the Commence Banking Nigeria initiative.

To affix this conversation, register here.

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