Tere,
Victoria from Techpoint here,
Here's what I've got for you today:
- Chinese EV maker enters Rwanda
- Netflix's largest Q4 ever
- DXwand's $4m Series A
Chinese EV maker enters Rwanda
Build Your Dreams (BYD), a Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer, has announced its expansion into Rwanda two years after entering Kenya, another East African nation.
The company's decision to enter Rwanda aligns with the country's focus on sustainable development, allowing BYD to expand its electric models into the African market.
One of the indicators of BYD's industry dominance is its status as China's best-selling automaker and brand. In December 2023, sales increased by 45%, bringing the year's total to 3,024,417 vehicles, a 61.9% increase over the previous year.
Enter Africa: BasiGo, one of East Africa's pioneering electric transit services, uses BYD buses. In July 2023, BasiGo expanded into Rwanda to address fleet shortage in the country.
Meanwhile, in March 2023, Associated Vehicle Assemblers (AVA), an automobile company, announced it would assemble 130 electric vehicles in Kenya from Chinese car manufacturer Build Your Dreams (BYD).
In January of the same year, BasiGo partnered with an automobile company, Associated Vehicle Assemblers (AVA), to assemble buses in Mombasa, a city in the country.
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In July 2023, BYD entered the South African market by introducing the Standard Range and Extended Range variants of its Atto 3 model. The company expanded from Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces to the Northern Cape in November.
Netflix's largest Q4 ever
Netflix recently released its Q4 2023 report, revealing that it added 13.12 million new subscribers, bringing its total subscriber base to 260 million.
The Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region contributed 5.05 million subscribers to the increase.
Netflix reported a 12% revenue increase in Q4 2023, up 6% from 2022 and 2% above expectations. The platform experienced 12.5% YoY growth at the end of the year.
While the streaming giant had 7.66 million additions in Q4 2022, Netflix reported that its 13.12 million paid net additions constituted its "largest Q4 ever."
Netflix's Q4 growth reflects the benefits of its paid sharing feature, recent price changes, and the company's strength, fueled by a strong slate.
Amidst the surge in subscribers, Netflix hints it will occasionally ask users to pay a little extra for the improvements on the platform.
On January 23, 2024, Netflix announced that World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) Raw will premiere on the platform in January 2025, beginning in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Latin America and expanding from there.
Adding WWE to Netflix could increase ad reach and subscriber growth because the company has over 36 million viewers in 180 countries, 1.5 billion social media followers, 800 million homes reached through television programming, 35 billion YouTube views, and more than $1 billion in annual revenue from its streaming service alone.
The three big streaming platforms: In 2023, MultiChoice-owned streaming service Showmax overtook Netflix in the African market share rankings. Netflix reportedly controlled 35% of the African market in November 2023, while Showmax now holds 40%.
On January 18, 2024 Amazon Prime Video, Africa's third largest streaming platform, announced it’s reducing jobs and local content production in Sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa to streamline operations and focus on European markets.
DXwand's $4m Series A
Egyptian startup DXwand has secured $4 million in Series A funding.
Algebra Ventures and Shorooq Partners led the round, with participation from Dubai Future District Fund, an existing investor.
The company plans to use the funds for MENA expansion and speed up research and development in omnichannel conversational AI, knowledge mining, and generative AI.
The Cairo-based company, founded in 2018 by CEO Ahmed Mahmoud and Mahmoud Gomaa, uses conversational AI to help Middle Eastern businesses automate employee support and customer service.
Initially, the company introduced DXwand to provide small businesses with a customer-focused chatbot tailored specifically for social media platform sales.
After three years, it pivoted to corporations and enterprises, focusing on the retrieval augmented generation (RAG) and knowledge mining domains.
DXwand's AI-powered software automates text and voice interactions between businesses, customers, employees, and citizen-facing government services.
This feature is available on multiple platforms, such as websites, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, SMS, and call centres. Per the platform, it can understand slang in both Arabic and English, pull insightful information from conversations, and display it on dashboards so businesses can make wise decisions.
Clients pay annual subscription fees ranging from $50,000 to $400,000, contingent on usage volumes.
Mahmoud also revealed that the business made over $5 million in recurring annual revenues in 2023..
With its chatbot presently serving over 40 clients across the MENA region, DXwand claims to be profitable today and to have helped over 200 clients grow their businesses.
In case you missed it
- Egypt-based beauty startup Mira raises $200,000 to support growth
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- Strong fundamentals maintain investor interest despite Nigerian startup funding dip
What I'm reading and watching
- Sama activates its multi-cloud integration in Kenya
- Brain Hack: 6 secrets to learning faster, backed by neuroscience
- 3 Thought Experiments That No One Can Solve
Opportunities
- Moniepoint is actively recruiting for multiple roles. Check them out here.
- The following positions at PiggyVest are open for applications: Treasury Executive, Quality Assurance Engineer, Information Security Officer-PocketApp, AML Analyst, Internal Auditor, and Senior Product Manager-PocketApp. Apply here.
- Anderson Optimization is hiring a Node Software Developer. Apply here.
- Statespace is looking for a Product Manager. Apply here.
- Tangent is hiring a Mid Weight Product Designer. Apply here.
- Self Financial is currently recruiting for multiple positions. Check them out here.
- Hive.co is hiring a Senior Software Developer. Apply here.
- Cere Network is looking for a Technical Product Manager. Apply here.
- Phantom is actively recruiting for multiple roles. Check them out here.
- A.Team is hiring a Senior Independent Software Developer. Apply here.
- Dapper is hiring a Product Designer. Apply here.
- Kenyan startups focused on embedded finance, future fintech, SME productivity tools, and content like local gaming and mobile advertising can apply for Safaricom’s Spark Accelerator programme. For more information, check this out.
- The International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) is looking for an editor to support the Arthur F. Burns Fellowship. Apply here.
- Application for the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) Class of 2025 is now open. Check out the one-year, fully sponsored, graduate-level programme in tech entrepreneurship here before March 18, 2023.
- Do you live in Nigeria and work with a local or foreign company? Whether it's remotely, on-site, hybrid, full-time, part-time or as a freelancer, @TheIntelpoint is trying to understand the Nigerian workspace: how you work, and toxicity in the workspace among others. Please, fill out the questionnaire here.
- Explore this website to find multiple job opportunities in Data that align with your preferences.
- If you are a software engineer, creative designer, product manager, design researcher, or a techie looking for an internship role, please, check out this website.
Have a fun weekend!
Victoria Fakiya for Techpoint Africa.
