Almentor’s online learning platform for Africa and the Middle East gets $6.5m backing from Partech, Sawari and Sango Capital Almentor, a video-based online learning platform for the Middle East and North Africa, has raised $6.5m in a Series B round led by Partech from its Africa Fund. The startup was founded in 2016 when Ihad Fikry and Ibrahim Kamel decided there was a need to cater to the learning needs in the MENA region that were not provided by other platforms. “We live in a region with a population of 400 million-plus people but 90% of them cannot learn properly in any other language but Arabic,” Ihab Fikry, Almentor’s co-founder and CEO, says to TechCabal. The courses are designed to provide knowledge “in a proper manner without promoting any ideology or religious thoughts,” Fikry says. How Almentor works From gamified mobile apps to websites that enable streaming, online learning comes in different varieties across the world. Hundreds of educational channels like TED-Ed, Khan Academy and Crash Course have carved a niche on YouTube, without having to build their own technologies. Where does Almentor fit in this universe? Fikry describes Almentor as sharing the attributes of renowned platforms like Masterclass, Udemy and LinkedIn Learning. It charges users a subscription to access its library of 12,000 videos. The platform has a video-on-demand component that enables learners to stream content, while a learning management system engages users in classroom-like activities like asking and answering questions, and taking exams. Almentor can be accessed anywhere, even in Nigeria, but the focus is to serve the Arabic region. Their library includes math, history, natural sciences and training material for corporations. For social sciences where context may vary between countries, creators are selected from various countries to ensure the material is relevant. However, many users can find similarities because virtually every course is available in Arabic. Almentor works with subject-matter teachers and professional content creators around the MENA region to create the courses. The company and the creators share revenue from subscriptions based on an agreement on exclusivity and whole ownership of the content by Almentor. Fikry says they have received over 3,000 applications from people who want to create course material on Almentor, but the acceptance rate is currently at 12%. Besides welcoming applications, the startup proactively headhunts already successful lecturers and also engages agencies to recruit mentors for them. So far, Almentor has provided 2 million successful learning experiences to users. Fikry explains this metric means the learner has consumed at least 25% of the learning material. Learning categories vary from basic (30% of their library) to intermediate and advanced levels. A typical Almentor learner is between ages 18 and 40 years old. 51% of learners are male while 49% are female. 60% are from Egypt, 25% are from Gulf nations like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain. The rest come from Algeria, Morocco, Niger and Arabs living in the US and UK. In terms of socioeconomic status, Fikry says Almentor learners are between the middle and upper class. “For those in Class A+, they prefer to learn in English though some learn in French. For others, almost 40% can only learn in Arabic,” Fikry, a PhD holder who used to be a management professor and PWC consultant, explains. Seed to Series B, driven by partnerships As much as it is a service targeted as directly serving consumers, a key element of Almentor’s progress has been over 80 partnerships it has entered with organisations and governments. One such partnership is with the Ministry of Education in Egypt for a white-label curriculum targeted at 4.5 million students in grades 7 to 9. They have another with the government in the UAE to upskill entrepreneurs in the region. Regardless of the country or the partnership, Almentor’s promise is that users will “learn from a subject matter expert without being driven to any ideology,” Fikry insists. It is a sophisticated commitment that requires a range of management skills, beyond merely setting up technology for streaming and learning. It also needs capital to achieve its potential, Fikry says, which explains why they have sought out investors to continue to build. As with having governments on board, working with VCs “gives credibility to the platform as we are serving an area with lots of dynamics,” Fikry says. He says they particularly sought out Partech for this round owing to the VC’s global spread of portfolio companies spanning fintech, edtech and other sectors. With this Series B, Almentor has now raised $14.5 million. It opened the funding gates with a $3.5 million seed fund in 2016. In 2019, Almentor’s $4.5 million Series A was led by Sawari Ventures, an Egyptian firm that closed a $71 million fund in April. Sawari also invested in this Series B round as Sango Capital, a firm based in South Africa. Cyril Collon, general partner at Partech, described Fikry and his co-founder as “two fantastic mission-driven entrepreneurs.” He believes Almentor is the leading platform for self-learning in the Middle East and Africa, and is looking forward to helping the company expand access to “on-demand cutting-edge personal learning & developments options.” #wnu #middleeast #africa

UK-based fintech firm Wise launches service that lets Indian users send money abroad Financial technology firm Wise said Tuesday that users in India would now be able to send money abroad to 44 countries around the world. That includes places like Singapore, the U.K., the United States, the United Arab Emirates as well as countries in the euro zone. India's outward remittances in the fiscal year 2019-2020 was around $18.75 billion, with more than 60% of it categorized under travel and paying for studying abroad, according to data from the Reserve Bank of India. Under a liberalized remittance scheme, the central bank allows residents to freely send up to $250,000 abroad to fund personal expenses or education per financial year — which begins in April and ends in March the following year. Typically, the inward remittance market is comparatively larger as many Indians working abroad send money back to their families in the country. World Bank data for 2019 showed personal remittances received in India exceeded $83 billion. Kristo Kaarmann, CEO and co-founder of Wise, which was previously called TransferWise, told CNBC that the ability to send money out of India was one of the most heavily requested services the company received from users. "India specifically, it is very exciting," Kaarmann said. "Over the last, like almost a decade now, the build up of local payments infrastructure and UPI has been very interesting to observe." Unified Payments Interface, or UPI, is one of the most dominant methods of digital payments in India. What makes the framework stand out compared with mobile wallets is its interoperability — which means people can use different platforms that are built on UPI to send money and conduct financial transactions. The London-headquartered Wise specializes in cross-currency money transfers, which can be done fully online. It claims its service is faster and cheaper compared with other fintech players as well as traditional banks, which tend to take a large cut and offer unfavorable exchange rates. Banks are the dominant platform for international money transfers in India. #wnu #wise

Tesla's vehicle price increases due to supply chain pressure, CEO Elon Musk says The price of Tesla vehicles is increasing due to supply chain pressures across the auto industry, particularly for raw materials, Elon Musk said on Monday in response to a tweet. "Prices increasing due to major supply chain price pressure industry-wide. Raw materials especially," Musk said in a tweet. He was responding to an unverified Twitter account called @Ryanth3nerd, which said, "I really don't like the direction @tesla is going raising prices of vehicles but removing features like lumbar for the Model Y..." In May, Tesla increased its Model 3 and Model Y prices, the automaker's fifth incremental price increase for its vehicles in just a few months, the Electrek website reported. During an earnings conference call in April, Musk said Tesla had experienced "some of the most difficult supply chain challenges," citing a chip shortage. "We're mostly out of that particular problem," he added at the time. In response to the removal of lumbar support on the passenger side in Tesla's Model Y, Musk said, "Moving lumbar was removed only in the front passenger seat of 3/Y (obv not there in rear seats). Logs showed almost no usage. Not worth cost/mass for everyone when almost never used." Earlier on Monday, the Electrek reported that new Tesla Model Y owners are reporting that their electric SUVs are being delivered without lumbar support on the passenger side. #wnu #Africa #tesla

Tencent helps Chinese students skip prohibitively low speeds for school websites overseas Hundreds of thousands of Chinese students enrolled in overseas schools are stranded as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt life and airlines worldwide. Learning at home in China, they all face one challenge: Their school websites and other academic resources load excruciatingly slowly because all web traffic has to pass through the country’s censorship apparatus known as the “great firewall.” Spotting a business opportunity, Alibaba’s cloud unit worked on connecting students in China to their university portals abroad through a virtual private network arrangement with American cybersecurity solutions provider Fortinet to provide, Reuters reported last July, saying Tencent had a similar product. Details of Tencent’s offering have come to light. An app called “Chang’e Education Acceleration” debuted on Apple’s App Store in March, helping to speed up loading time for a selection of overseas educational services. It describes itself in a mouthful: “An online learning free accelerator from Tencent, with a mission to provide internet acceleration and search services in educational resources to students and researchers at home and abroad.” Unlike Alibaba’s VPN for academic use, Chang’e is not a VPN, the firm told TechCrunch. The firm didn’t say how it defines VPN or explain how Chang’e works technically. Tencent said Chang’e rolled out on the app’s official website in October. The word “VPN” is a loaded term in China as it often implies illegally bypassing the “great firewall.” People refer to its euphemism “accelerator” or “scientific internet surfing tool” otherwise. When Chang’e is switched on, iPhone’s VPN status is shown as “on”, according to a test by TechCrunch. On the welcome page, Chang’e asks users to pick from eight countries, including the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., for “acceleration”. It also shows the latency time and expected speed increased for each region. Once a country is picked, Chang’e shows a list of educational resources that users can visit on the app’s built-in browser. They include the websites of 79 top universities, mostly U.S. and the U.K. ones; team collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams, Trello and Slack; remote-learning platforms UDemy, Coursera, Lynda and Khan Academy; research networks such as SSRN and JSTOR; programming and engineering communities like Stack Overflow, Codeacademy and IEEE; economics databases from the World Bank and OECD; as well as resources for medical students like PubMed and Lancet. Many of these services are not blocked in China but load slowly on mainland China behind the “great firewall.” Users can request sites not already on the list to be included. Chang’e appears to have whitelisted only its chosen sites rather than all traffic on a user’s smartphone. Google, Facebook, YouTube and other websites banned in China are still unavailable when the Chang’e is at work. The app, available on both Android and iOS for free, doesn’t currently require users to sign up, a rare gesture in a country where online activities are strictly regulated and most websites ask for users’ real-name registrations. The offerings from Alibaba and Tencent are indicative of the inadvertent consequences caused by Beijing’s censorship system designed to block information deemed illegal or harmful to China’s national interest. Universities, research institutes, multinational corporations and exporters are often forced to seek censorship circumvention apps for what the authorities would consider innocuous purposes. VPN providers have to obtain the government’s green light to legally operate in China and users of licensed VPN services are prohibited from browsing websites thought of us endangering China’s national security. In 2017, Apple removed hundreds of unlicensed VPN apps from its China App Store at Beijing’s behest. In October, TechCrunch reported that the VPN app and browser Tuber gave Chinese users a rare glimpse into the global internet ecosystem of Facebook, YouTube, Google and other mainstream apps, but the app was removed shortly after the article was published. Source techcrunch #wnu #china #tencent

SpaceX’s first ocean spaceport is being built and will host launches next year SpaceX is already underway on building its first floating spaceport platform, and the plan is for it to start hosting launches as early as next year. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shared those details on the progress of its build for Deimos, one of two converted oil rigs that SpaceX purchased earlier this year in order to transform them into floating launch and landing sites for its forthcoming Starship reusable rocket. SpaceX’s purchase of the two rigs at the beginning of this year was for the creation of Deimos and Phobos, two floating spaceports named after the moons of Mars. They’ll act as offshore staging grounds for Starship launch activities, and the name is appropriate because the eventual plan is to have Starship provide transport for both people and goods to and from the red planet. Musk and SpaceX have previously shared their vision for a future in which spaceports like Deimos are positioned within convenient reach of major hubs around the world, making it possible for SpaceX to operate a globe-spanning network of hypersonic point-to-point travel using Starships ferrying people from destinations as far flung as Beijing to New York in around 30 minutes. Before that, however, SpaceX will be looking to conduct orbital flight testing of the still in-development Starship, and its accompany booster, the Super Heavy. Musk said earlier this year that it could begin flying rockets from its offshore platforms as early as the end of 2021. This new timeline indicates that rosy estimate has been pushed, which is pretty standard for the multi-CEO. The company has recently made good progress in its Starship program, however, with a successful high-altitude launch and landing test at its Texas ‘Starbase’ development site. SpaceX is now in the process of getting ready for its first orbital flight test, which will include flying Starship atop Super Heavy for the first time, and a recovery of the Starship following the test after it splashes down off the coast of Hawaii. It’s now doing longer fire Raptor engine ground tests to get ready for that next big milestone. #wnu #africa #spacex

It might get harder for budding African creators to make money with YouTube’s new terms of service Google-owned video-sharing platform, YouTube, released an update to its terms of service in November 2020. While it immediately took effect for users in the US, users outside the US will begin to experience the change from June 1, 2021. The update revealed that taxes will now be levied on the royalties of content creators resident in the US, who are already entitled to payments on the platform. This will soon take place in other countries as the new terms of service are rolled out. The platform revisited its data privacy policy and warned strongly that it would not permit the collection of any information, facial recognition data inclusive, that might be used to identify a user without their permission. YouTube also emphasised its right to monetise all content on the platform as it announced that ads might appear on channels not in the YouTube Partner Program (YPP), and the YouTubers who own these channels will not get a revenue cut. What this means is that as a content creator on YouTube who isn’t a partner on YPP, ads — which YouTube says you’re not entitled to get payments for — might now appear during your videos. The YPP was launched in December 2007 as a means of revenue generation for creators, who allow ads to appear on their videos for an amount of money. Members of the YPP have to meet certain criteria, including having up to 1,000 active subscribers and 4,000 valid watch hours in the last 12 months. And what’re the implications of this? The new policy puts some creators on the platform at a disadvantage, especially those still looking to grow their channels. Rejoice Ambrose, a growing YouTuber running a lifestyle channel, thinks this may be detrimental to her growth. “I do not think it’s fair. I mean, ads can be so annoying; talk less for those of us who are still trying to grow our channel. How are we going to maintain viewers when they have to endure ads appearing on our videos, and we won’t even get paid for them? But then, it’s their platform; I don’t think we can really do anything about it,” she tells Techpoint Africa. In YouTube’s defence, more ads are a part of the company’s investment in solutions that help advertisers reach a larger audience and scale their businesses. We previously explored why some Nigerian YouTubers have to look outside the platform to get revenue for reasons like low content engagements because most of their viewers face the issue of low broadband access. With these new updates, one can only wonder what the fate of budding and professional Africa-based YouTubers will be, as a large chunk of their audience is in demographics with low access to stable Internet data. source Techpointafrica #wnu #Nigeria #youtube #Africa

How Nigerian credit fintech startup, BFREE, is helping Africans repay their loans In 2019, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) issued a directive to banks mandating them to increase the number of loans they give. Consequently, there was an increase in loan requests. With technology and the rise of money-lending platforms like Carbon, Branch, FairMoney, and Migo, offering personal collateral-free loans, anyone can borrow money without visiting a bank. This means that lenders are more accessible. However, since the onset of the pandemic, they have had a tough time as borrowers haven’t repaid their loans, citing the economic effects of COVID-19. In 2020, the CBN activated the Global Standing Instruction (GSI) policy allowing banks to withdraw defaulting loans from any account held by a borrower. While loan collection for BVN-linked bank accounts may be somewhat smooth, the reverse is the case for credit fintech startups. Moreover, with millions of people demanding personal loans, lending amounts for these platforms become smaller. Also, lenders experience difficulties in collection for small amounts. This challenge prompted the three co-founders — Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Julian Flosbach; Chief Production Officer (CPO), Moses Nmor; and Chief Operations Officer (COO), Chukwudi Enyi — to come up with BFREE, in August 2020. Through its tech-enabled and credit management solution that makes collection processes more scalable, efficient, and user-friendly, BFREE concentrates on helping its customers with their finances. “Lending has experienced a digital revolution, but credit collection needs to be efficient, scalable, and ethical. That’s exactly what we are doing at BFREE,” Flosbach says. Built by an experienced team The team met at FairMoney, where Flosbach was General Manager. Enyi was the Head of Growth at Nairabox, OPay, and FairMoney, while Nmor is a former team member at OPay, Kudi, and FairMoney. Their duties at FairMoney were mostly related to managing loan collection. They’d also all spent time at different fast-scaling financial startups where loan collection was a problem. “All the co-founders used to work in large digital lending fintech startups in Nigeria, and collections were always a struggle. Hence, we looked at the collection process to come up with a way to reinvent it from scratch to fix these challenges,” Enyi reveals. While lending has evolved digitally, loan collection is still done traditionally through law firms and smaller collection agencies, with little or no transparency or accountability. Besides, customers are often threatened with calls, messages, and emails, which Flosbach calls “a no-go for impact-oriented lenders.” “Although lenders are specialists and may seem to be focused on lending, they may not be skilled or focused on collections,” Flosbach clarifies. Therefore, there is a need to specialise in loan collection and lending because the two products are different. “The lenders’ tech improves the actual lending product and not collection. All the digital lenders I know look to outsource their collections due to the scalability issue,” Flosbach says. Solving an actual problem Lending platforms unavoidably end up with Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) companies that provide outsourcing services for large telcos or banks by managing their teleservices and customer services. Since the BPO companies are not lending professionals, the co-founders aim to help lenders get their money from their customers. Customers fail to repay their loans for different reasons. Therefore, a different approach is required to make them pay back. “No legit customer takes a loan with the intention to default. However, life does not always go according to plan. In the end, a customer that cannot service a loan is in a financial emergency,” Enyi explains. To tackle this, they first identify why the customer defaulted before deploying machine language algorithms. BFREE uses a combination of a self-servicing platform, chat and call bots, and human contact centre operations after identifying how customers can repay. “Here we deploy machine learning algorithms that predict the probability to repay a customer and define the use case of the customer,” Flosbach submits. And if customers have not been repaying their loans and interests to the lenders, it’s likely BFREE reaches out to them. “If a customer has not been servicing a balance from a lender, there is a good chance that we will get in contact with them and offer our product to find a solution that works for the customers and the lender,” Flosbach says. On the other hand, customers who don’t repay are addressed differently. “Customers who don’t repay don’t want to because they don’t see the benefits of repaying. Hence, they need financial literacy,” Flosbach adds. Before such customers start servicing a loan again, the startup gives them some financial education like understanding the importance of loan repayment and credit score. “We try as much to incentivise these customers to cooperate with us. For example, we offer them a discount on their loan repayments. After offering them the incentives, we do our financial literacy classes,” says Flosbach. Meanwhile, they are currently testing these classes through their self-service platform to see how effective they would be on debt customers. “We do not use an app for our self-servicing platform, but a webview, which works like a webpage,” he discloses. While they reach out to the debtors, the co-founders believe that in an ethical credit collection, not everyone would repay. At the moment, Flosbach claims there is no other fintech startup offering the same service as BFREE on the continent. “There is no similar innovation in Africa in our space of the lending value chain. This part has been overlooked for quite a while, and our competition mainly consists of BPO companies.” However, the team believes that with time, competition for innovation in credit collections in Africa would increase. “We’d welcome this step as it is always better for the end-customers if options are competing for the best customer value,” Flosbach declares. A sustainable model On how BFREE makes money, Flosbach explains, “We charge a certain percentage commission of the repayments that a lender receives. This commission depends on the lender’s portfolio size, portfolio quality, and likes.” And how sustainable is that? “It is sustainable. We have very solid unit economics as our solutions work very well, and we usually achieve at least 30% higher repayments than the BPO companies,” he continues. Though the credit fintech startup operates a B2B2C model, with currently over 300,000 customers, it has its challenges. “One of our challenges is to convince lenders that there is a better way to do collection than how they’ve been doing it,” he says. From Nigeria to Africa The Lagos-based credit startup recently raised an $800,000 pre-seed round to build a solution for all emerging markets struggling with infrastructure for collection in Africa. Nigeria-based Beta.Ventures, Launch Africa Ventures, and GreenHouse Capital led the round. “We focus all of our product development to assist customers in a state of financial emergency. There are millions of customers in personal debt. This is really what motivates us as a team,” Nmor declares. The team is bullish about the Kenyan market they are expanding into. “We have a team on the ground already that is setting up our solution as we speak,” Flosbach reveals. In the Kenyan market, there have been several cases where BPO companies threatened or publicly shamed customers, something Flosbach considers inappropriate for lenders. While debt consumers may default on a payment due to unforeseen circumstances, the high interest on payment is also a factor. Recall that in digital predatory lending in Nigeria, we highlighted how the interest rate upon repayment is one reason debt consumers don’t repay promptly. In Kenya, where scores of apps offering short-term advances similar to payday loans are common, the interest rate upon repayment is also a problem. The credit fintech startup offers a personal budgeting service to debt consumers to help them spend within their means and repay their loans with interest promptly. Through its consumer personal budgeting processes, algorithms, and financial literacy, BFREE believes it will tackle Africa’s rising consumer debt. #wnu #bfree #africa

African cross-border payments startup, Chipper Cash, raises $100m, reportedly valued at over $1 billion to $2.5billion African cross-border payments startup, Chipper Cash has raised a $100 million Series C led by US-based Venture Capital (VC) firm, SVB Capital. The three-year-old startup, founded by Ham Serunjogi and Maijid Moujaled in 2018, offers mobile-based, no fee, P2P cross-border payment services, across up to seven African countries — Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Africa and Kenya. Per Techcrunch, the company has also expanded to the UK, the first country it has expanded to outside Africa. The company says it plans to use the latest round to introduce more products and grow its team. Recall that in 2019, the startup raised $8.4 million in two seed rounds, in June 2020 it followed this by raising $13.8m Series A led by Deciens Capital, and by November 2020, it closed a whopping $30m Series B led by Ribbit Capital and Bezos Expeditions. It is, perhaps, noteworthy that Chipper Cash has raised up to $152 million in just two years. Like Bezos Expeditions and Ribbit Capital in the previous round, this will be SVB’s first investment in the African market. While he doesn’t exactly confirm the startup’s unicorn status, Serunjogi tells TechCrunch that Chipper Cash is likely the most valuable private startup in Africa. With Flutterwave (a private startup) valued at over $1billion and Jumia (a public company) currently valued at $2.6 billion, this should put Chipper Cash’s valuation anywhere between $1 billion and $2.5 billion. However, Serunjogi refuses to focus on valuations, and would rather set his sights on growing his team and launching interesting new products. As of June 2020, the company stated that it plans to hire over a hundred staff in addition to its 200-man strong workforce. Its users have reportedly increased to 4 million, up 33% from last year. While it claimed to process 80,000 daily transactions in November its current transaction volumes have not been disclosed. As for products, the company seems to be planning other products in addition to the crypto platform it launched in 2020. “We’re also launching our US stocks product in Uganda, Nigeria and a few other countries soon,” Serunjogi said to TechCrunch. Interestingly, this comes at a time when Nigeria’s Securities Regulator is planning to bring some form of regulations for Investment-tech platforms that also offer US stocks like Chaka, Bamboo, and Trove. But, Serunjogi claims the company is already engaging regulators ahead, and like Flutterwave’s CEO, Gbenga Agboola, he commended regulators like the Central Bank of Nigeria for fostering innovation in the fintech sector. Nonetheless, Chipper Cash is playing in the cross-border payments space that has been historically difficult to crack. Per the World Bank, sending money within and to Africa remains the world’s most expensive, and that has likely led several people to embrace cryptocurrency. Though Chipper Cash says it has launched its crypto product, it may no longer be able to directly serve the Nigerian market following the CBN’s move to ban financial institutions from facilitating crypto transactions. Being unable to directly facilitate crypto transactions in Nigeria, could offering US stocks with a seemingly lenient SEC be the next best thing? On the bright side, Chipper Cash joins the ranks of Jumia, Fawry, Interswitch and Flutterwave as African unicorns in record time. If reports from The Information are to be believed, Nigerian fintech, OPay, could be joining them anytime soon. #wnu #chippercash #Africa

ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming to step down as CEO by end of 2021 Zhang Yiming, the storied co-founder of ByteDance, is stepping down from his role as the CEO and passing the torch to Liang Rubo, another co-founder of the TikTok parent and one of the world’s most valuable internet juggernauts. In an internal letter to employees, 38-year-old age Zhang said he is making the transition to spend more time on “long-term strategy, corporate culture, and social responsibility.” Zhang will work side by side with Liang, currently ByteDance’s head of human resources and his college classmate, over the next six months to ensure a smooth transition. Zhang will remain as a member of the board at ByteDance. From the sound of the letter, Zhang reminisces about the period between college and starting ByteDance in 2012 when he spent ample time thinking about the future. That led him to conclude that machine learning would revolutionize the way people encountered information and the idea laid the foundation for ByteDance’s algorithm-driven content distributors such as Toutiao and TikTok. But acting as a CEO, he said, he was preoccupied with “listening to presentations, handling approvals, and making decisions reactively.” “Innovation and success are rooted in years of exploring and imagining what is possible. However, few people have real insight into the future, preferring to model on current and past achievements,” the founder wrote, citing American tech giants as role models. “People are amazed by the success of electric cars, but they forget that Tesla is 18 years old and first experimented with laptop batteries to power its vehicles. People know about Apple’s software management tool HomeBrew, but few realize that computer geeks were discussing the Apple I in the HomeBrew Club in the 1970s.” Zhang also recognized that he’s not the ideal manager type, saying he’s “more interested in analyzing organizational and market principles, and leveraging these theories to further reduce management work, rather than actually managing people.” “Similarly, I’m not very social, preferring solitary activities like being online, reading, listening to music, and daydreaming about what may be possible.” Liang appears to be a better fit for wearing the CEO hat for his experience leading R&D and Lark, which started as an internal work collaboration tool and later evolved into a full-flung SaaS product sold to other enterprises. Another high-profile Chinese tech boss who recently resigned from day-to-day operations was Colin Huang, founder of Alibaba’s arch rival Pinduoduo. Huang took a step back so he could allocate his energy to food and life sciences, areas that the e-commerce firm hopes could fuel its future growth. #bytedance #wnu

Kanye West is now worth a staggering $6.6 billion, as revealed in a new Bloomberg report and confirmed by a rep to Billboard. According to a private document obtained by the outlet, Yeezy – West’s sneaker and apparel business with both Adidas and Gap – has been valued at between $3.2 billion to $4.7 billion by the Swiss investment bank UBS Group. As much as $970 million of that total is tied to West’s new clothing line for Gap (under the Yeezy Gap label) that the retailer has slated for release by July, part of a 10-year agreement the parties signed in June of last year. The document further reveals that Gap, an ailing brand whose partnership with West represents a play for younger consumers, expects its Yeezy line to break $150 million in sales in its first full year in 2022 and envisions it surpassing a billion dollars in revenue within eight years, or even as soon as 2023 on the upside. West stands to profit handsomely in any event, as he retains sole ownership and creative control of the Yeezy brand and earns royalties on sales under the deal, with the rate increasing as the business grows. He'll also receive stock warrants when the collection hits sales targets, with the highest set at $700 million, according to a securities filing. West’s longstanding deal with Adidas has been the most lucrative part of his business endeavors to date, with Yeezy sneakers continuing to fly off of shelves; according to the documents, the brand grew 31% to nearly $1.7 billion in annual revenue last year, netting Yeezy royalties of $191 million. West has been in business with the company since 2013, with their current deal running through 2026. An unaudited balance sheet of West’s finances, provided to Bloomberg by his lawyer, shows an additional $122 million in cash and stock and more than $1.7 billion in other assets, including an investment in his wife Kim Kardashian’s underwear label Skims (Kardashian filed for divorce in February). West’s music catalog is worth another $110.5 million, according to a 2020 valuation by Valentiam Group cited by Bloomberg. The numbers revealed today represent a decidedly sharp turnaround for West, who in 2016 claimed to be $53 million in debt; at the time, he also took to Twitter to implore Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg to invest $1 billion in his work. That was before West himself was named a billionaire by Forbes, which estimated his net worth at $1.3 billion in April 2020. #wnu #Kanyewest #FirstblackAmericanTo be Ever Worth 6.6billion us dollars