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There are more than 400 million Arabic speakers globally and that number isn’t slowing down anytime soon . Arabic, to most people, is a tough language even to those who speak it. According to Duolingo , someone fluent in Egyptian Arabic might not fully understand Yemeni Arabic speakers because of the vast difference in dialect . While individuals can easily navigate dialects , it can be relatively hard for them to find tailored Arabic content essential for everyday life . Dr Ihab Fikry and Ibrahim Kamel founded Almentor.net in 2016 as an online video learning platform to compensate for this lack of online learning content for Arabic speakers . In collaboration with hundreds of leaders, educators, and experts, the platform offers courses and talks in various fields like health, humanities, technology, entrepreneurship, business management, lifestyle, drama, sports, corporate communication, and digital media . In 2016, Almentor closed a $3.5 million seed round and two years...

Cloud kitchens are already meant to reduce the burden of infrastructure on food and beverage brands by providing them with centralized facilities to prepare meals for delivery. This means the responsibility falls on cloud kitchen operators to make sure they have enough locations to meet demand from F&B clients, while ensuring fast deliveries to end customers. Indonesian network DishServe has figured out a way to make running cloud kitchen networks even more asset-light. Launched by budget hotel startup RedDoorz’s former chief operating officer, DishServe partners with home kitchens instead of renting or buying its own facilities. It currently works with almost 100 home kitchens in Jakarta, and focuses on small- to medium-sized F&B brands, serving as their last-mile delivery network. Launched in fall 2020, DishServe has raised an undisclosed amount of pre-seed funding from Insignia Ventures Partners. RedDoorz raises $70M to expand its budget hotel network in Southeast Asia ...

Cookie pop-ups getting you down? Complaints that the web is ‘unusable’ in Europe because of frustrating and confusing ‘data choices’ notifications that get in the way of what you’re trying to do online certainly aren’t hard to find. What is hard to find is the ‘reject all’ button that lets you opt out of non-essential cookies which power unpopular stuff like creepy ads. Yet the law says there should be an opt-out clearly offered. So people who complain that EU ‘regulatory bureaucracy’ is the problem are taking aim at the wrong target. EU law on cookie consent is clear: Web users should be offered a simple, free choice — to accept or reject. The problem is that most websites simply aren’t compliant. They choose to make a mockery of the law by offering a skewed choice: Typically a super simple opt- in (to hand them all your data) vs a highly confusing, frustrating, tedious opt-out (and sometimes even no reject option at all ). Make no mistake: This is ignoring the law by design. Si...

Fintech in Africa is a goldmine. Investors are betting big on startups offering a plethora of services from payments and lending to neobanks, remittances and cross-border transfers, and rightfully so .  Each of these services solves unique sets of challenges. For cross-border payments, it’s the outrageous rates and regulatory hassles involved with completing transactions from one African country to another . Chipper Cash , a three-year-old startup that facilitates cross-border payment across Africa, has closed a $100 million Series C round to introduce more products and grow its team . It hasn’t been too long ago since Chipper Cash was last in the news. In November 2020, the African cross-border fintech startup raised $30 million Series B led by Ribbit Capital and Jeff Bezos fund Bezos Expeditions . This was after closing a $13.8 million Series A round from Deciens Capital and other investors in June 2020. Hence, Chipper Cash has gone through three rounds totalling $143.8 m...

Intel kicked off this year’s virtual Computex by announcing two new 11th Gen U-Series chips for use in thin, lightweight laptops. It also unveiled its first 5G M.2 module for laptops, designed in a partnership with MediaTek (Intel sold its smartphone modem business to Apple in 2019 ). Both of Intel’s new chips have Intel Irix Xe graphics. The flagship model is the Core i7-1195G7, which has base clock speed is 2.9 GHz, but can reach up to 5.0 GHz on a single core using Intel’s Turbo Boost Max 3.0 tech. The other chip, called the Core i5-1155G7, has a base clock speed of 2.5GHzm and a maximum of 4.5GHz. Both chips have four cores and eight threads. A comparison chart of Intel’s new 11th-gen chips The 5G M.2 module, called the “5G Solution 5000,” supports 5G NR midband, sub-6GHz frequencies and eSIM tech. Intel has partnerships with telecoms in North America, EMEA, APAC, Japan and Australia. The module is expected to be in laptops produced by Acer, ASUS, HP and other manufacturers...

The vast majority of people in India, the world’s second most populous nation, don’t have health insurance coverage. A significant portion of the population that does have coverage get it from their employers. Plum , a young startup that is making it easier and more affordable for more firms in the nation to provide insurance coverage to their employees, said on Monday it has raised $15.6 million in its Series A funding to accelerate its growth. Tiger Global led the funding round. Existing investors Sequoia Capital India’s Surge, Tanglin Venture Partners, Incubate Fund, Gemba Capital, also participated in the new round, which brings the one-a-half-year-old startup’s to-date raise to $20.6 million. TechCrunch reported earlier this year that Plum was in talks with Tiger Global for the new financing round. Kunal Shah (founder of Cred), Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini and Hemesh Singh (founders of Unacademy), Lalit Keshre, Harsh Jain and Ishan Bansal (founders of Groww), Ramakant Sharma an...