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Kenyan women-only taxi service, An Nisa, eyes Saudi expansion. 2 other stories and a trivia

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This line-up of stories will help you discover the latest happenings around the tech world, today.

1. Kenyan women-only taxi service, An Nisa, eyes Saudi expansion

A Kenyan women-only taxi service, An Nisa, has announced plans to make an expansion into Saudi Arabia, a development after its milestone of securing about 10,000 users in its home market.

The announcement was made by the startup in a press statement seen by Ripples Nigeria on Tuesday.

The startup, which was founded by Mehnaz Sarwar in 2018, operates as an app-based startup since last year, and has now garnered more than 10,000 users.

Speaking on the startup’s mode of operation, Mehnaz Sarwar, founder and CEO of the startup noted that it offered different ride-hailing services for users seeking premium taxi services.

She said, “We have a team of female drivers and we cater for women and children. We also do monthly packages for parents and for working ladies.

“We empower our drivers by giving them better rates while working on a safe environment for both our drivers and customers.

“The gap was the safety of the women – a lot of cases of harassment were reported and experienced by women in the taxi services. In terms of competition, An Nisa is unique, as we only deal with women.

“We initially started strong, and are now currently working on getting more customers. We have a few strong corporate clients, like Standard Chartered.

“We make money through our daily rides, plus our monthly subscriptions and our corporate clients.”

Tech Trivia: Which of the following requires keywords as input?

A. Calculator

B. Word processor

C. Spreadsheet application

D. Search engine

Answer: see end of post

2. IBM to replace 7,800 jobs with AI

The International Business Machines Corp through its CEO, Arvind Krishna, has recently announced that its hiring plan will slow down.

Read Also:TechNigeria: A weekly digest of what went down in Nigeria’s tech space

The IBM CEO stated this during a recent chat with press, noting that about 7,800 jobs could be replaced by Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the coming years.

According to Krishna, about 30% of non-customer-facing roles in IBM could be replaced by AI and automations in five years.

The CEO explained that job roles such as human resources would be suspended or slowed in the coming years.

The new development followed the launch of OpenAI last November by Microsoft.

3. B2B e-commerce Eighty6 closes $3.7M Seed round

A UAE-based B2B startup, Eighty6, has closed a $3.7 million Seed round to further its ambition as a leading online procurement platform for restaurants.

The startup disclosed the new development in a statement seen by Ripples Nigeria on Tuesday.

According to the statement, the round saw the participation of Sanabil 500 MENA Seed Accelerator Fund and prominent GCC family offices.

Speaking on the profile of investors, the company noted that the new round featured strategic investors who possess a comprehensive grasp of the food and beverage industry.

Ripples Nigeria gathered that the startup was founded in 2021 by Abdul Kader Saadi, who saw business opportunities in reducing time spent on procurement.

According to the founder, a lot of time were wasted on procurement whether from the restaurant or the supplier’s perspectives, and as a result, there was need to minimize mistakes, gaps and food wastage.

“Our platform offers a tech-focused solution that addresses the pain points faced on a daily basis by operators and suppliers,” said the founder, Abdul Kader Saadi.

“With Eighty6, the users are empowered with deep data and can expect to benefit from machine learning capabilities in the future.”

Trivia Answer: Search engine

Keywords are words or phrases that describe content for search engines. They can be used as metadata to describe images, text documents, database records, and Web pages. A user may “tag” pictures or text files with keywords that are relevant to their content.

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