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Thursday, September 26, 2019
Gogoro launches its newest electric vehicle, a lightweight scooter called Viva
Image Credits: Gogoro
Gogoro, the Taiwanese electric vehicle company, revealed its newest vehicle today, a lightweight scooter designed for people who want something smaller than one of the company’s Smartscooter mopeds, but more powerful than an electric bike. Called the Viva, the scooter can run for 85 kilometers on one of Gogoro’s swappable batteries, which are charged at the same stations as its Smartscooters.
Horace Luke, co-founder and CEO of Gogoro, tells TechCruch that the Viva was created as an environmentally-friendly alternative to 50cc to 100cc gas scooters. It will be available starting in October, launching first in Taiwan next year before being released in some international markets.
Made from recyclable scratch-proof solid-core polypropylene and available in five color combinations, the Viva weighs 80 kilograms and has up to 21 liters of storage. It will retail at USD $1,800, with about 100 optional accessories available, including baskets and racks.
As in many other Asian cities, mopeds are popular in Taiwan and serve as the primary vehicle for many drivers, transporting multiple passengers and deliveries. Luke says Gogoro’s scooters now account for 95% of the country’s electric vehicle market share and about 17% of all new vehicles sold in Taiwan, including gas ones.
Viva was created to attract customers who don’t want to deal with the costs, including maintenance visits and parking, of owning a bigger moped.
“The Viva is aimed toward the population going no more than 5 kilometers a day, who don’t want to worry about scratches, cost of ownership, having to take it to the shop for maintenance or parking,” he adds. “We have 17% market share and now the question is how do you get to 25% or 35% market share?”
Like Gogoro’s mopeds, the Viva is also connected to the company’s iQ system, which lets users unlock their vehicles and monitor mileage and maintenance with a smartphone app. With Taiwanese government subsidies for electric vehicles, it will cost NTD $25,980 (about USD $837), making it competitive with the pricing of high-end electric bikes. Gogoro will also offer two years of free maintenance for Vivas sold in Taiwan.
Gogoro has now sold more than 200,000 Smartscooters and is present in international markets including the European Union (through a partnership with scooter-sharing service Coup), South Korea, where it recently launched electric scooters designed for delivery drivers, and Japan. It also runs a mobility platform designed to be a white-label solution for ride-sharing companies.
Nintendo’s ‘Mario Kart Tour’ is out now for iPhone, iPad and Android
Mario Kart Tour, Nintendo’s latest mobile game, is now available on iOS for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, as well as on Android devices. The game, like Nintendo’s other mobile releases, is free to play, with in-app purchases (in-game currency called “rubies”) that you use for upgrades and unlocks.
Players immediately unlock one rider and get a tutorial to start, which introduces them to the Mario Kart Tour driving mechanics, which are slightly different than the ones you’re probably used to if you’ve played Mario Kart games for Nintendo’s various consoles. Specifically, your kart will always be moving forward, so there’s no acceleration to press; instead, you slide your finger side to side on the screen to steer left and right, with a tap firing off any items or weapons you might pick up.
High scores earn you points that can be redeemed for in-game unlocks, and the game also features other new mechanics, like “frenzy mode,” which gives you a timed period of unlimited item use whenever you pick up three of the same. Special challenges are also new in this mobile iteration, which introduce new ways to win instead of just placing first in a race with other kart drivers. Mario Kart Tour also features online ranking with other mobile players worldwide.
The “Tour” component of the game is also a new twist: Nintendo is mixing courses inspired by real-world cities in with levels that are taken from classic Mario Kart games, and these will be cycling every two weeks for a fresh global tour on a regular basis. In-game characters will also get costume variants that are inspired by these globe-trotting destinations.
Based on Nintendo’s track record, Mario Kart Tour should be perfectly playable without any in-game purchases, but players may feel that they hit a progression wall pretty quickly without picking up some currency. It’ll be interesting to see how this one fares, given that Apple has just introduced its own Arcade subscription service focused on games that eschew in-app purchase mechanics — including cart racer Sonic Racing, which looks very much like it was once intended to offer similar in-app mechanics before Arcade came along.
Nigeria’s CcHub acquires Kenya’s iHub to create mega Africa incubator
Two of Africa’s powerhouse tech incubators will join forces. Nigerian innovation center and seed-fund CcHub has acquired Nairobi based iHub — CcHub CEO Bosun Tijani confirmed to TechCrunch.
The purchase amount is undisclosed, but Tijani said CcHub will finance the deal out of its real-estate project to build a new 10 story innovation center to replace its Herbert Macaulay Way building in Lagos.
Details are emerging on how the two entities will operate together, but Tijani noted some degree of autonomy.
“The names will stay the same…iHub will remain iHub…it is a strong brand…but iHub will be supported from the central CcHub, which will help them strengthen what they do,” he said.
Per the acquisition, Tijani becomes CEO of both organizations, while Nekesa Were continues as iHub Managing Director. iHub’s existing programs will remain, according to Tijani, but CcHub will extend some of its existing activities in education, healthcare, and governance to Kenya.
CcHub will also use the iHub addition to expand its investment scope. “We’ll now have access to pipeline in Nigeria, Kenya, and Rwanda,” he said.
Tijani views the arrangement as a boost to the continent’s tech ecosystem. “It strengthens our ability to support innovation. iHub and CcHub…coming together makes us stronger; it gives us a chance to attract greater resources and talent,” he said.
The acquisition joins two of the Africa’s most recognized tech hubs. These innovation spaces, accelerators, and incubators—which tally 618 per GSMA stats—have become focal points for startup formation, training, and IT activity on the continent.
There aren’t official rankings for Africa’s most powerful tech hubs, but if there were, CcHub and iHub would arguably be up top. This would be based on the size of their membership networks, volume of tech related programs, startups incubated, partnerships, and global visibility.
Founded in 2011 in Lagos’ tech-synonymous Yaba suburb, the Co-Creation Hub has grown into a multi-faceted innovation center. The organization manages digital skills programs for entrepreneurs and school kids, startup incubation, and a portfolio of investments through its Growth Capital Fund.
CcHub is considered a go-to spot for any tech related visit to Nigeria. It was Mark Zuckerberg’s first public stop on his 2016 Africa trip. While leaving a CcHub event in 2018, I noticed the Vice President of Nigeria, Yemi Osinbajo, and his entourage packing into the elevator.
Tijani and team have mastered gaining partnerships with big global tech names. When Facebook launched its tech space in Nigeria—NG_Hub—CcHub was named lead partner. Google for Startups sponsored CcHub’s Pitch Drive, an African startup tour to Europe and Asia. CcHub also collaborated with the Government of Rwanda this year to open its Design Lab in Kigali, focused on innovating impact solutions in health, education, and governance.
The Design Lab launch extended CcHub’s West Africa reach further east and closer to iHub. The innovation center was co-founded by Erik Hersman in 2010 out of what he saw as a need in Africa’s emerging tech scene “for…creating community spaces…in major cities [for] young entrepreneurs. The nexus point for technologists, investors, [and] tech companies.”
iHub became that central spot in East Africa. Along with M-Pesa mobile-money and a vibrant startup scene, it is one of the pillars that inspired Kenya’s Silicon Savannah moniker.
iHub is also widely seen as giving rise to the Africa’s innovation center movement that inspired the upsurge in tech hubs across the continent.
Since 2010, 170 companies have formed out of iHub. It has 16,000 members and has played host to most major visitors to Kenya’s tech scene. After seeing CcHub in Nigeria in 2016, Zuck then headed to Kenya and toured iHub.
There’ll be plenty for continuing coverage on how these two prominent African incubators settle into becoming one big Africa mega-hub. That includes the sustainability question and what this all means to the continent’s tech scene.
At a high level, for now, the CcHub-iHub union creates a direct innovation link between two of Africa’s most active markets for VC and startup formation—Nigeria and Kenya.
In the past, both countries’ techies have shared a healthy rivalry. That could now turn to more collaborations, as CcHub’s acquisition connects East and West in African tech.
Facebook announces Horizon, a VR massive-multiplayer world
Facebook today announced it’s building its own Ready Player One Oasis. Facebook Horizon is a virtual reality sandbox universe where you can build your own environments and games, play and socialize with friends or just explore the user-generated landscapes. This is Facebook’s take on Second Life.
Launching in early 2020 in closed beta, Facebook Horizon will allow users to design their own diverse avatars and hop between virtual locales through portals called Telepods, watch movies and consume other media with friends and play multiplayer games together, like Wing Strikers. It also will include human guides, known as Horizon Locals, who can give users assistance and protect their safety in the VR world so trolls can’t run rampant.
Users interested in early access can apply for the beta here.
As part of the launch, Facebook will on October 25 shut down its existing social VR experiences Facebook Spaces and Oculus Rooms, leaving a bit of a gap until Horizon launches. Oculus Rooms debuted in 2016 as your decoratable private VR apartment, while Spaces first launched in 2017 to let users chat, watch movies and take VR selfies with friends. But both felt more like lobby waiting rooms with a few social features that were merely meant as a preamble to full-fledged VR games. In contrast, Horizon is designed to be a destination, not a novelty, where users could spend tons of time.
How Facebook Horizon works
At first glance, Horizon seems like a modernized Second Life, a first-person Sims, a fulfillment of the intentions of AltspaceVR and a competitor to PlayStation’s PSVR Dreams and cross-platfrom kids’ favorite Roblox. Back in 2016, Facebook was giving every new Oculus employee a copy of the Ready Player One novel. It seems they’ve been busy building that world since then.
Facebook Horizon will start centralized around a town square. Before people step in, they can choose how they look and what they wear from an expansive and inclusive set of avatar tools. From inside VR, users will be able to use the Horizon World Builder to create gaming arenas, vacation chillspots and activities to fill them without the need to know how to code.
Facebook Horizon lets you build objects from scratch
You could design a tropical island, then invite friends to hang out with you on your virtual private beach. An object creator akin to the Oculus Medium sculpting feature lets you make anything, even a custom t-shirt your avatar could wear. Visual scripting tools let more serious developers create interactive and reactive experiences.
Facebook details its Horizon safety features on its “Citizenship” page that explains that “As citizens of Facebook Horizon, it is all of our responsibility to create a culture that’s respectful and comfortable . . . A Horizon citizen is friendly, inclusive, and curious.” Horizon Locals will wander the VR landscapes to answer questions or aid users if they’re having technical or safety issues. They seem poised to be part customer support, part in-world police.
Facebook Horizon will include human Locals who provide safety and technical support
If things get overwhelming, you can tap a shield button to pause and dip into a private space parallel to Horizon. Users can define their personal space boundaries so no one can get in their face or appear to touch them. And traditional tools like muting, blocking and reporting will all be available. It’s smart that Facebook outlined the community tone and defined these protections.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Horizon today at the Oculus Connect 6 conference in San Jose. He discussed how “Horizon is going to have this property where it just expands and gets better” as Facebook and the community build more experiences for the VR sandbox.
Facebook lets you build your own islands and other locales in Horizon
Horizon makes perfect sense for a business obsessed with facilitating social interaction while monetized through ad views based on time-spent. It’s easy to imagine Horizon including virtual billboards for brands, Facebook-run shops for buying toys or home furnishings, third-party malls full of branded Nikes or Supreme shirts that score Zuckerberg a revenue cut or subscriptions to access certain gaming worlds or premium planets to explore.
As Facebook starts to grow stale after 15 years on the market, users are looking for new ways to socialize. Many have already ditched the status updates and smarmy Life Events of Facebook for the pretty pictures of Instagram and silliness of Snapchat. Facebook risked being cast aside if it didn’t build its own VR successor. And by offering a world where users can escape their real lives instead of having to enviously compare them to their friends, Horizon could appeal to those bored or claustrophobic on Facebook
source: techcrunch
FLUTTERWAVE - Disrupting The Future Of Online Payments Processing In Africa
When a formidable team of innovators rub minds together to create a product that would be industry-changing, it is called a disruption.
This is the story of flutterwave.
Are you a business owner looking to do business in Africa but managing payments seamlessly is a huge source of concern for you? Then read on .
By now it's no longer news that there's disruption in the finance industry especially within Nigerian and generally on the African continent as a whole, technology is re-shaping how payments are made not just within Nigeria and Africa but in the world at large. One of such companies at the intersection of this rapid growth and innovation that has piqued interests is flutterwave.
What is Flutterwave?
Flutterwave is an online payment processing company focused on helping and connecting businesses and their customers with secure and seamless payment experience.
Flutterwave works with banks across Africa by providing the needed technology and integrations for payments in local currencies with local debit cards, bank accounts or mobile wallets across several African countries. It was founded in 2016 by a team of ex-bankers, entrepreneurs and engineers and one notable member of the team is Iyinoluwa Aboyeji (a co-founder at Andela one of the African continent's most notable tech startup).
Headquartered in San Francisco (which was stragetic to the company landing international funding) with offices in Lagos, Nairobi, Accra, Johannesburg flutterwave's service allows consumers to pay for things in their local currency. Before flutterwave, there was no universal payment method in Africa for businesses to accept and transfer payments which significantly created a gap for businesses as well as consumers. African businesses have a hard time accepting payments within the continent as well as outside. This digital divide also makes it difficult for companies like Google, Netflix,Amazon and Facebook to accept local payments from African customers.This was one of the motivating factors for one of the co-founders, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji to leave Andela ( a company he had recently cofunded for flutterwave, a passion to place Africa on the global digital and payments landscape).
In 2017, it was able to raise over $10 million in a Series A round of funding. The round was led by Greycroft Partners and Green Visor Capital with participation from Y Combinator and Glynn Capital which flutterwave used to get more talents and build it's global reach.
To date, the company has processed more than $2.5 billion in payments (as of 2019, flutterwave) across 100 million transactions. 350 currencies across 30 African countries are currently accepted by flutterwave and a small service charge is collected from businesses, which it shares with banks. It has partnered with 50 banks in Africa and 1200+developers build on Flutterwave for a company that's 3years old that's laudable of course having a highly skilled team is evidently a plus as well. To advance their goal as the payments platform to be reckoned with, the Flutterwave team has integrated other foreign payments API to theirs, making transactions between buyers and sellers globally even more seamless. businesses that use flutterwave include Uber, flywire, OjaExpress, Kikikamu etc
Lifechanging Innovations
Products that have been developed by flutterwave as it charts frontier leadership within the fintech industry include:
Rave (flutterwave for business) is a payment service created by flutterwave that enables merchants accept global payments from card, bank accounts and USSD. It supports payment from 150+ currencies which is a breathe of fresh air for African businesses. Rave has no set up or monthly fees costs, you can start with right away and only pay for the transactions you accept Rave is now connected to Xero, Quickbooks, Sage and Zoho.
GetBarter (flutterwave for consumers) is a lifestyle payment solution launched by flutterwave alongside Visa. Visa cardholders will be able to make payments within the app and make online and mobile transactions by attaching their card details to their GetBarter app profile while non-card carriers can generate a virtual Visa card upon registration. GetBarter users can carry out their business transactions, pay utility bills and send payments to thousands of anywhere Visa is accepted globally.
FlutterWave's Challenges
Amidst these rave reviews (pun intended), there have been some reservations like one’s inability to securely capture a payment when you make use of your own forms, unlike its foreign peers: Stripe and Fattmerchant, that allow you to tokenize your credit card payments in a safe way, while allowing you to use your own forms. But it cannot be ignored, the unique abilities that Flutterwave possesses when it comes to payment on a continent where very few are in possession of credit cards is quite a feat on its own.
Achievements
- 2017 - raised $10 million in a Series A funding.
- 2018 - completed an extension of its Series A funding round backed by global payments companies like CRE Ventures, Fintech Collective, MasterCard 4DX Ventures amongst others and raised a total of $20 million.
- 2018 - Flutterwave received an award for the Best Payments Company at the Ghanaian eCommerce Awards ceremony in Ghana.
- By the end of 2018 there was 550% growth in the customer base for rave(flutterwave for business). Also it had 26,000 users and counting.
- 2019 - Flutterwave partnered by Visa launch consumer payment product called GetBarter.
- 2019 - Flutterwave currently partners hotels.ng on its internship project for young developers IN Nigeria.
In all if you are a business looking for a way to create a seamless payments system within your business within the African continent then flutterwave is your best bet for a seamless experience.