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Question: If you needed to borrow extra cash to get your choice apartment or pay your rent? How long would it take to hustle the cash? If you are thinking a couple of days, then you might find this App useful. With the Branch app, you don’t have to count days. With just your smartphone, you can get the cash you need sent to your account in minutes. No questions, long forms or collateral. Start with small amounts and build your credit history over time to give you access to loans of up to N150K. Find out more here
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Nigeria-based real estate startup, Fibre, has launched a second product, called Secure, at Techcrunch Startup Battlefield which took place in the US last week. Fibre’s first product allows people rent serviced apartments and pay monthly (compared to the 1-or-2-year upfront payment regular landlords charge) while the second product, Secure, caters to the opposite end of the spectrum. With Secure anyone will be able to invest in specific portions of, or entire, properties (essentially becoming landlords) and then rent it out through Fibre’s first product. The startup has raised $790K in funding to date.
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Netflix has acquired worldwide rights to “Lionheart”, a new age Nigerian movie and legendary Nigerian actress Genevieve Nnaji’s directorial debut, on the eve of its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Lionheart is Netflix’s first Nigerian acquisition.
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Uber was offering free “UberAIR” trips in Uganda in a promotion last week. It’s unclear if this means a definite roll-out of its helicopter service is happening in Uganda or if its already live but I thought you people should know about it so there you go. Enstartup has more on the gist.
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Techweez reports that Kamal Bhattacharya, head of Kenya-based Safaricom’s Alpha innovation arm, has abruptly left the company (and the telco altogether). Prior to joining Alpha, Kamal was CEO at Nairobi-based innovation hub, iHub.
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US-based enterprise software company, Comsol, has partnered with Samsung South Africa to launch a live 5G pilot network in Soweto, South Africa. They claim speeds of up to 1.76Gbps and plan to make it commercially available before the end of 2019.
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South Africa-based Multichoice, parent company of satellite TV service DSTV and online streaming platform Showmax, is considering staff cuts following DSTV’s declining subscriber base, per this report from MyBroadband. In it’s year-end report in March, DSTV said it had lost 41K subscribers – which its CEO blamed on Netflix.
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Fintech contribution to Africa’s GDP (which currently stands at $1.6 trillion) will hit $150 billion in 2022, per this report from Techcentral. Also, the segment currently employs ~3 million people and majority of the growth taking place in the space is buoyed by mobile money adoption, which Africa leads the rest of the world in.
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If you are an African fintech startup focused on financial inclusion, applications are now open for the “CATAPULT: Inclusion Africa” one-week bootcamp, organised by the Luxembourg House of Financial Technology (LHofT), with support from PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and the government of Luxembourg. Deets and everything else here.
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La Fin!
Have a great week ahead, people! We’ll see you tomorrow.
– Akindare
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Delight your friends and annoy your enemies by sharing this digest!
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