August in Latin America: Tech News Roundup

On one hand, it raised a $35 million Series D round led by growth equity firm Innova Capital, with participation from South African media and e-commerce heavyweight Naspers, which has been backing the company since 2008. In a blog post, the fund highlighted location as one of the key factors that led it to invest in Ofi; Colombia is a fast-growing market, where office supply purchases still haven’t moved online. According to Rabbit’s new CEO, half-Mexican entrepreneur Michael Temkin, the company is hoping to replace existing workarounds: “People have tried to recreate this experience online by cobbling together different technologies and devices, but it just doesn’t work. Banco Santander and Telefónica joined forces to launch Miriada X, an online education platform that will offer free courses in Spanish and in Portuguese, news agency EFE reported. Secret’s careers page currently lists a job vacancy for a Brazilian Portuguese-speaking community operations specialist able to “turn upset users into evangelists.” The Mexican government launched an initiative asking developers to come up with solutions to several public issues, for instance by creating apps to help citizens report street lighting problems and corruption.