Indian oil-to-metals conglomerate Vedanta and global manufacturing giant Foxconn have signed a memorandum of understanding with the Indian state of Gujarat to set up a $20 billion semiconductor unit in the coastal state.
Top officials says Foxconn will bring technical expertise to the venture whereas Vedanta, which has a background in mining, will finance the project.
Chief Minister Bhupendrabhai Patel says every state government department will also provide all possible assistance to make this project successful.
Ashwini Vaishnaw, India’s IT Minister, says electronics manufacturing in India has already generated around 25 lakh jobs.

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Peloton hit heights experienced by precious few tech firms, As exercise demands shifted away from the gym amid pandemic-related shutdowns.
Peloton announced that Foley has resigned from the company altogether, alongside fellow founder and Chief Legal Officer Hisao Kushi. Foley’s resignation goes into effect today, while Kushi’s is planned for October 3.
Tammy Albarrán will become both chief legal officer and corporate secretary on the latter date. She most recently served as chief deputy general counsel and deputy corporate secretary of Uber.

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Google announced that 60 African startups have been selected for the second cohort of its Google for Startups Black Founders Fund.
Each of the selected startups will receive support in the form of a 6-month training programme that includes tailored workshops, community-building sessions and access to a network of mentors to assist in tackling challenges that are unique to them.
The 60 startups will also get equity-free funding between $50,000 and $100,000, and up to $200,000 in Google Cloud credit.
The Google for Startups programme has created over 4,600 jobs through the startups it invested in, with the startups going on to raise more than $290 million in funding.

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Kippa, a financial management and payments platform for Nigerian small businesses, announced that it has raised $8.4 million in a new financing round.
This fundraiser brings the total fundraised by Kippa to $11 million.
This recent fundraising saw Kippa, welcome new global investors, including Goodwater Capital, TEN13 VC, Rocketship VC, Saison Capital (the venture arm of Credit Saison), Crestone VC (led by Inanc Balci, Co-founder and former CEO at Lazada), VentureSouq, Horizon Partners and Vibe Capital.
The company earlier announced that it obtained a Super-Agent licence from Nigeria’s apex bank, the Central Bank of Nigeria just like other agency banking players OPay and TeamApt.

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The U.S. Department of Commerce is detailing some of those plans, outlining where $50 billion of that funding will go. Reiterating the legislation’s key goals, the DoC notes that the money will be focused on getting the U.S. back on track with domestic semiconductor production, building a back-stock of chips and creating jobs.
An eligible applicant for funding under the Section 9902 incentives program must be a covered entity, which can be a private entity, a nonprofit entity, a consortium of private entities, or a consortium of nonprofit, public, and private entities with a demonstrated ability to substantially finance, construct, expand, or modernize a facility relating to fabrication, assembly, testing, advanced packaging, production, or research and development of semiconductors, materials used to manufacture semiconductors, or semiconductor manufacturing equipment.
$39 billion will go toward building out domestic manufacturing, $28 billion of which will arrive as incentives for manufacturers to design next-gen chips, with $10 million focused on existing chips.

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Waysia, an Asian grocery delivery platform, Previously known as Alorsfaim, started out in Paris four years ago as a platform delivering from Asian restaurants and supermarkets to customers. When the pandemic hit, its users began to panic buy and quickly emptied retailer supplies.
Yejun Fan, founder and CEO of Waysia says the pandemic showed that the need for ethnic groceries was really underserved in Europe.
A handful of startups are already delivering Asian takeout across Europe, but online grocery targeting the demographic is still relatively rare, reckoned the founder, who worked in finance before becoming a serial entrepreneur.

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Juul has long argued that it’s trying to save lives; meanwhile, its own existence seems precarious at times.
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong announced the deal, noting that in addition to the financial terms, the settlement will force Juul to adhere to specific marketing and sales practices, including refraining from depicting anyone younger than age 35 in its marketing in film, on billboards or in social media, or to sell Juul-branded merchandise.
The company also agreed to never again fund education programs in schools, even while it spiked this short-lived practice years ago under pressure from regulators.

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Metaverse Magna, a blockchain gaming platform, has raised a $3.2 million seed sale token round to expand its efforts to build Africa’s largest gaming DAO and provide gamers with access to world-class opportunities.
Nestcoin’s CEO and co-founder, Yele Bademosi, says that the opportunity for Metaverse Magna came from the number of gamers on the continent, combined with the absence of any platform that operated at the intersection of cryptocurrency and gaming on the continent.
Bademosi added that his main driving force has been to see digital assets adopted more widely in the mainstream and used as a tool for economic transformation.

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Canada-based neobank Be Mobile Africa has announced its official launch in South Africa with a mission to make banking accessible to the unbanked and underbanked in the country.
It also offers low to no-fee banking products through its mobile app.
The company further claims that customers will be able to transfer and request money from anyone in the Be Mobile Africa network instantly and at no cost, and to exchange currencies with low foreign exchange fees.
The company’s mobile app is available for Android and iOS devices and the company plans to launch a B2B offering in the near future.

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The recent Gross Domestic Product reported by the National Bureau of Statistics, the information and communications technology (ICT) sector contributed 18.44% to Nigeria’s GDP in the second quarter of 2022.
The sector saw a 6.55% growth rate from Q1 2022.
The contribution of the oil sector, which used to dominate the country’s GDP bottom line, fell to 6.33% in Q2 2022, a position lower than its 7.42% in Q2 2021 and 6.63% in Q1 2022.
With trade coming in second to ICT and contributing 16.81% to the economy, higher than the 16.6% it recorded in 2021 when the world was just recovering from the pandemic, and the 16.13% it recorded in Q1 2022, the non-oil sector dominated the economy.

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