Empowerly, an edtech startup that specializes in college counseling and career guidance services, raised $15 million in a recent funding round led by Conductive Ventures, the company announced today.
“Last year was one of the most competitive college admissions seasons of all time,” co-founder Hanmei Wu tells TechCrunch.
Empowerly has a network of over 100 college counselors who focus on areas such as pre-med, engineering, STEM, business, law and humanities, among others.
Empowerly touts its proprietary technology – The Empowerly Score – as the main differentiator between its competitors, which include CollegeWise, Solomon Admission Consulting and AcceptU.
Additionally, Empowerly joined the Sequoia marketplace in July 2023, providing its services as an employee benefit to working parents.
FairMoney, a digital bank based in Lagos and headquartered in Paris, is in discussions to acquire Umba, a credit-led digital bank providing payroll and financial services to customers in Nigeria and Kenya, in a $20 million all-stock deal, sources tell TechCrunch.
Umba, founded by Tiernan Kennedy and Barry O’Mahony in San Francisco in 2018, was launched as a credit-led digital bank targeting emerging markets.
To date, the digital bank has secured around $20 million in funding, per PitchBook data.
FairMoney could likely be more interested in Umba’s microfinance license, obtained in 2022 through acquiring a majority shareholding in Daraja Microfinance Bank.
For FairMoney, acquiring Umba could streamline entry into Kenya, bypassing the lengthy licensing process that took Umba three years.
The European Union is formally investigating TikTok’s compliance with the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA), the Commission has announced.
Although the EU’s concerns over TikTok’s approach to content governance and safety predate the DSA coming into force on larger platforms.
Commenting in a statement, Margrethe Vestager, EVP for digital, said:The safety and well-being of online users in Europe is crucial.
The EU may also accept commitments offered by a platform under investigation if they are aimed at fixing the issues identified.
In TikTok’s case the platform informed the bloc last year that it had 135.9M monthly active users in the EU.
Three local councils in the United Kingdom continue to experience disruption to their online services, a week after confirming a cyberattack had knocked some systems offline.
Robert Davis, a spokesperson for Canterbury City Council, told TechCrunch last week that the council’s initial investigation suggests that no customer data was accessed.
However, the U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office told TechCrunch on Friday that the data regulator has received a breach report from the three councils.
Thanet District Council spokesperson Clare Winter shared an updated statement with TechCrunch, which has also been published on the council’s website.
“Thanet District Council is currently limiting access to a number of its online systems,” the statement reads.
Fantuan, a Vancouver, Canada-based Asian food delivery company, announced it acquired Chowbus’ delivery business line.
In addition to restaurant delivery the company also works in the fresh grocery delivery and dine-in service segments.
After consolidating Chowbus’ delivery business, Fantuan plans to solidify its Asia-focused food delivery services across cities in the U.S.
Meanwhile, antitrust regulators in the European Union had similar cartel suspicions and raided two online food delivery companies in November.
And Indian food delivery company Swiggy went on a buying spree.
The Digital Markets Act (DMA) applies to just six (mostly US) tech giants, including Meta.
The incoming choices will also enable regional users of Facebook Messenger to stop Meta combining their data with their use of its social network.
This is the only alternative Meta currently offers EU users who don’t want it to process their information to run tracking ads.
And it remains to be seen whether EU data protection regulators will accept it.
An ex ante reform of digital competition law in Germany already led to Meta making some concessions over cross-site tracking last June.
Shamba Pride has since 2016 worked to enhance last-mile distribution for farm inputs and tackle price exploitation and quality issues for farmers through its merchant network dubbed digishops.
The agtech has, so far, built a network of merchants (agro-dealers) extending across 24 counties in Kenya, which represents just over half of the country.
The new funding, which includes $1.7 million equity, follows $1.1 million capital raised in 2021 from SAV and Gray Matters Capital.
“Agriculture distribution in rural communities is heavily controlled by agro-dealers who decide how farmers access inputs, services and training.
Shamba Pride sources inventory from partners such as French multinational Elephant Verve that supplies it with “climate-smart” farm inputs, which is part of the agtech’s strategy to build resilience for small-holder farmers.
The Barcelona court accepted that the mental problems suffered by the worker are not a common illness but a work accident, per the newspaper.
Meta’s subcontractor had processed his absence from work as common ailment and sought to deny responsibility for any psychological harms suffered from reviewing violent content uploaded to Facebook and Instagram.
Meta also noted it provides technical solutions to subcontractors which are intended to enable content reviewers to limit their exposure to graphic material they are being asked to moderate as much as possible.
In the article the newspaper quotes a worker describing the support provided by their employer, and Meta’s subcontractor, as “very insufficient”.
Legal rulings that impose requirements on third party content reviewers to take care of workers’ mental health could put limits on the model, however.
Three councils in the United Kingdom have taken some of their public-facing systems offline due to an ongoing cybersecurity issue.
The NCSC and the three councils declined to say whether the cybersecurity issue relates to an in-house system or an outside vendor.
TechCrunch found that some of Canterbury City Council’s payments systems, provided by EKS, were unavailable.
Dover and Thanet are also both reporting issues with online forms and online payments.
Since 2018, outsourcing giant Civica has provided EKS services as part of a seven-year deal to cut costs across the three councils.
Apple’s response to being required to allow developers to lever payment options apart from its in-house system is drawing a bevy of negative commentary from tech folks.
And with good reason: Apple is offering little and demanding much, ensuring that it can continue to demand a massive cut of developer revenue.
The reduction in demands constitutes a full 3% reduction from its existing 30% fee charged to payments that occur inside of its App Store system.
Simply put, Apple is trying to offer developers what it has to, but with enough costs attached to make it economically unpalatable.
Eric Seufert of Heracles Capital, described Apple’s posture as “heads I win, tails you lose,” which feels pretty accurate.
