Author: Kaluka wanjala

Asset financier Mogo Kenya has secured Sh800 million in local debt financing from I&M Bank and Ecobank, alongside the launch of a Sh1.5 billion two-year bond programme, as it moves to expand asset-backed lending to small and micro enterprises (SMEs) across the country. The capital will support the scaling of motorcycle, car and smartphone financing, targeting entrepreneurs in the boda boda and informal transport sectors who rely on productive assets to generate income. If you have a startup you want featured on TechArena, let us know through this contact form here. The bond programme, arranged by Dry Associates Investment Bank, is backed by…

Absa Bank Kenya has unveiled a new Visa Infinite Metal Debit and Credit card. The Visa Infinite card introduces a metal card design (debit and credit variants), MPESA Paybill and Till integration, tap n’ Pay via NFC-enabled smartphones, garmin smartwatch payment support, buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) conversion through the Absa Mobile App, international travel insurance cover of up to USD 2.5 million and access to curated travel offers in destinations including Dubai, London, and New York through Visa’s Destination proposition. The integration with MPESA Paybill and Till numbers shows a localized approach that blends global card prestige with Kenya’s…

Zoho recently marked its 30th anniversary and announced it has surpassed one million paying customers globally. The company also reported that in 2025 it had strong year-on-year growth. According to the company, it recorded 32% customer growth and 20% revenue growth year-on-year in 2025. Unlike many global SaaS competitors backed by venture capital, Zoho has remained privately held and fully bootstrapped. “Being bootstrapped, private, and built entirely in-house makes Zoho an outlier among competitors,” said Sridhar Vembu, Co-founder and Chief Scientist, Zoho Corporation. “Before any innovation becomes a product or policy, it must first affirm the question: ‘Will this help…

Kenya, India and Italy have announced a strategic trilateral partnership aimed at co-designing and deploying scalable, sovereign AI systems across Africa. This makes it one of the most structured international AI collaborations involving an African government. The agreement was unveiled following the AI Impact Summit 2026. It signals a shift from fragmented pilot projects toward what the partners describe as “AI diffusion pathways”. The collaboration is co-led by the EkStep Foundation (India), the Directorate of Digital Economy and Emerging Technologies at Kenya’s Ministry of ICT and Digital Economy and Italy’s Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy through the G7-endorsed…

The Connected Africa Summit (CAS) 2026 will be held in Nairobi from April 27 to 30 at the Edge Convention Centre. Under the theme “Uniting Africa’s Innovation for a Single Digital Market,” the summit aims to move beyond dialogue and into execution. If you have a startup you want featured on TechArena, let us know through this contact form here. Over 2,000 delegates gathered in Diani in 2025. Discussions ranged from digital inclusion, climate technology, connectivity, future skills, data policy and emerging technologies. The 2025 edition led to the adoption of the Diani Resolutions. This is a joint communiqué committing stakeholders to strengthen…

 Vertiv has introduced the Vertiv Avocent MergePoint Unity 2, a next-generation KVM switch platform for secure, centralised management of IT devices across enterprise data centre environments, distributed edge locations and branch office environments. Designed to help operators simplify day-to-day operations, respond to issues with speed, and maintain system availability, the switch enables remote diagnosis, configuration, and recovery while protecting IT systems from unverified firmware and software.  “As organisations distribute workloads across multiple locations, the complexity of infrastructure management grows accordingly,” said Ramesh Menon, vice president of IT systems solutions at Vertiv. “The Vertiv Avocent MergePoint Unity 2 provides a centralised control point…

I&M Bank has partnered with Visa aimed to help strengthen Kenya’s digital payment infrastructure and expanding the adoption of Visa-powered products in the market. According to the two institutions, the agreement will focus on upgrading payment systems in underserved areas, improving cross-border transaction efficiency, and expanding access to secure digital payment services across Kenya. Kihara Maina, Regional CEO of I&M Bank, described the move as a major step in advancing the bank’s digitization agenda. “We are delighted to strengthen our long-standing partnership with Visa through this strategic agreement, which advances our digitization agenda and ambition to build robust digital payment…

Auni, an artificial intelligence-powered mini app developed by Fastagger and embedded within Safaricom’s M-Pesa Business Super App, has surpassed 3,500 business sign-ups within its first three months of its launch. Auni is built on Microsoft Azure and is optimized for affordable smartphones and low-connectivity environments. It helps to transform M-Pesa PDF statements into structured dashboards using optical character recognition (OCR) and lightweight AI models. If you have a startup you want featured on TechArena, let us know through this contact form here. Instead of manually reviewing statements, business owners can instantly visualize sales patterns, customer frequency, cash flow trends, peak transaction hours and…

NETSCOUT has been recognised as a top workplace by Comparably, an employee review platform that ranks more than 70,000 companies on key categories impacting the employee experience. Comparably’s Best Place to Work Awards is an annual series, announced quarterly, highlighting the best workplaces. The awards are derived from sentiment ratings anonymously provided by employees about their workplaces in multiple categories on Comparably.com during a 12-month period. Winners are then determined based on 20 core culture metrics. NETSCOUT received a top award in three categories this quarter, namely: Comparably analysed more than 15 million anonymous employee ratings on 70,000 companies to determine the latest rankings, with…

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has proposed a $5 million (about Ksh 645 million) equity investment in Arc Ride. According to IFC disclosures, the investment will support Arc Ride’s ongoing Series A financing round aimed at scaling its battery-swapping network across Kenya, expanding into new African markets, and strengthening its technology capabilities through research and development and compliance upgrades. If you have a startup you want featured on TechArena, let us know through this contact form here. The size of the stake IFC intends to acquire has not been disclosed. Arc Ride operates a Battery-as-a-Service (BaaS) model for electric two-wheelers. Under the model,…