Tag: alibaba group

African fintech firm Flutterwave launches SME e-commerce portal

San Francisco and Lagos-based fintech startup Flutterwave has launched Flutterwave Store, a portal for African merchants to create digital shops to sell online. The product is less Amazon and more eBay — with no inventory or warehouse requirements. Flutterwave insists the move doesn’t represent any shift away from its core payments business.…

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Will China’s coronavirus-related trends shape the future for American VCs?

Rocio Wu Contributor Rocio Wu is a second-year MBA candidate at Harvard Business School and a venture capitalist. For the past month, VC investment pace seems to have slacked off in the U.S., but deal activities in China are picking up following a slowdown prompted by the COVID-19 outbreak. According…

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An IPO? In this economy?

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. Late last week a Chinese company called Kingsoft Cloud filed to go public in the United States. The cloud infrastructure business intends to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol…

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Alibaba Cloud will invest $28 billion more into its infrastructure over the next three years

Alibaba Cloud announced today that it will invest another RMB 200 billion (or about $28 billion) into its infrastructure over the next three years, prompted in part by increased demand for services like video conferencing and live streaming as businesses adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic. The investment will focus on…

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To avoid hostile takeovers amid COVID-19, India mandates approvals on Chinese investments

Chinese investors, who have poured about $6 billion into Indian startups in the last two years, will be subjected to strict regulation for their future investments in the world’s second largest internet market. India amended its foreign direct investment policy on Saturday to include China in the list of neighboring…

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SoftBank expects $24 billion in losses from Vision Fund, WeWork, and OneWeb investments

The Japanese technology conglomerate SoftBank Group said it would lose a staggering $24 billion on investments made through its Vision Fund and bets on the co-working real estate company, WeWork, and satellite telecommunications company, OneWeb. Ultimately, the company expects the losses to help generate a $7 billion total loss for…

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