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Ruka Hair has raised new funding to scale its mission of ensuring hair and beauty solutions work for the textured-hair community. Ruka Hair Ruka Hair Co-Founder and CEO Tendai Moyo was 17 when she went to a corner shop in Swindon, England, on the hunt for hair extensions, she explained in an interview with Translate Culture. She recalled seeing inexpensive hair extensions and later realizing the industry had changed little over the years. “I was a strategy consultant prior to this, and the industry hasn’t changed very much. It’s still really hard to find high-quality hair extensions that work for Black women. Success for us is about creating a brand that brings Black women joy,” Moyo said in the video. “ For too long in this space, getting your hair done is painful. When you’re a kid, it comes with a lot of t ears. I t’s expensive, you’re spending money on products that don’t work, and oftentimes, you don’t really know what you’re doing because you haven’t had that expert access. So...
MEDASE Cocktails has expanded to another retailer. As AFROTECH™ previously reported, the Los Angeles-founded venture was cofounded by Inga Dyer and Monica Cornitcher. The two were inspired to launch the company in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic when Cornitcher relocated from Atlanta to California, allowing her to spend more time with Dyer, who was already based there. “Then we started to talk about, ‘Hey, it wou ld be nice to have a cockt ail, right?’ Because we did drink cocktails throughout college, after college, but we were kind of slowing down on drinking . And Inga’s reason for not drinking was that she was battling breast cancer at the time,” Cornitcher said in a previous interview with AFROTECH™ . “ And during her battle with breast cancer, she was not drinking at all . And we were starting to experiment with mocktails in the space . We probably tasted everything out there at the time.” In 2023, MEDASE Cocktails launched as a premium, zero-proof, organic,...
GreaterHealth Pharmacy & Wellness is putting the community first. As AFROTECH™ previously reported, GreaterHealth Pharmacy & Wellness filled a need for more than 45,000 St. Louis, MO, residents who had been without a pharmacy. For founder Dr. Marcus Howard, the opening also marked a return home, as he left St. Louis to pursue a bachelor’s degree and Ph.D., while maintaining a drive to eliminate health care disparities. “I went to North Carolina to pursue my undergrad degree and my Ph.D., and I returned home to really take all the things that I learned out in the community in other places and bring them back home because I know St. Louis is a great place. It’s my home. I just wanted to bring something back and make a difference,” he said in an interview with Nine PBS. His pharmacy officially opened its doors in 2022 at 5503 Delmar Blvd., Suite B, St. Louis, Missouri 63112, and adopted business models similar to those of Walgreens and Amazon. It delivers medication, over-the-counter...
Kevin Hart’s deal with Authentic Brands Group (ABG) has impacted his media company Hartbeat. As previously reported by AFROTECH™, the multi-platform media company released projects across TV, film, digital, and audio, and had a $650 million valuation in 2022. This coincided with the merger of Laugh Out Loud and HartBeat Productions, bringing both companies under the HartBeat banner, as well as a $100 million investment from Abry Partners. As for where the venture stands today, film and television projects have declined, and new podcasts that were pitched have not been produced, according to Bloomberg. Hart, who was appointed CEO of Hartbeat in 2025, is no longer playing a significant role in the company. A small group of executives is now managing the day-to-day responsibilities of Hartbeat. Additionally, there have been shifts in the workforce. Hartbeat laid off around a dozen employees in December 2025. Eric Eddings and Lesley Gwam were among the staff laid off by the company....
Rosarium Health, a Black-founded healthtech company supporting in-home care for aging populations, has secured new funding. Cameron Carter is the founder and CEO of the company, which was inspired by his years spent in value-based healthcare operations and business development roles at DaVita Inc., Bright Health, Evolent Health, and Truven Health Analytics, according to his LinkedIn profile. He told the American Family Insurance Institute that he observed how customers spent money on healthcare and how their health outcomes “often fall short.” He also mentioned to the outlet, “I repeatedly saw that people were ending up in hospitals or nursing facilities because their living situations and neighborhood environment were unsafe and unsupported, not because they needed more medicine.” Carter also has first-hand experience navigating at-home healthcare from when he assisted his aunt and grandmother. While they did not need “round-the-clock care,” they needed a safer bathroom, improved...
Pinky Coleman’s former CFO has been indicted. Aaron Mattison was a co-owner and chief financial officer of Bar Vegan with the restaurateur and Slutty Vegan founder. Mattison claims he worked on Wall Street after graduating from college, in both traditional investment banking and private equity , according to Restaurant Informer. After business school, his focus pivoted to strategy and consulting. “Bar Vegan started from conversations with Pinky once I joined the executive team of Slutty Vegan,” he told the outlet. Per a press release, Bar Vegan was described as an Atlanta-based “go-to dining destination for exceptional plant-based cuisine” and cocktails. The venture was launched in 2021 and operated at Ponce City Market. After four years, it closed, Rough Draft Atlanta reports. Bar Vegan had been tied to allegations that it withheld tips and paid unfair wages, according to a 2022 class action lawsuit initially brought by employee Morgan Georgia, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution...
Uncle Nearest receiver Phillip G. Young Jr has requested that the whiskey brand’s request to speed up its bankruptcy appeal be denied. As AFROTECH™ previously told you, Uncle Nearest founder and CEO Fawn Weaver approved a Chapter 11 filing to reorganize debts for Uncle Nearest, Inc., Nearest Green Distillery Inc., and Uncle Nearest Real Estate Holdings, LLC in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, Knoxville Division, according to Young. Uncle Nearest has been under receivership since August 2025 after defaulting on more than $108 million in loans to its lender, Farm Credit Mid-America. “Chapter 11 requires complete financial transparency. In that courtroom, no one gets to hide behind filings without evidence or accusations without proof, and the picture that has been painted about Uncle Nearest will now have to be proven through numbers that add up, not words,” Weaver said in a March 17 Instagram video. “Court filings associated with our Chapter 11...
Reality television or not, entrepreneurship was always in the cards for Porsha Williams. Reality TV Before making her debut on “ The Real Housewives of Atlanta ” for its fifth season in 2012, Williams was already a business owner. In a conversation on “ Forbes Talks Shop, ” she revealed that her mother had owned child care centers since Williams was two. At 24, she began following in her mother’s footsteps . “Twenty-four is when I started my very first child care center myself. So I’ve always been in business,” she told Forbes. “I think that since I transitioned from being a child care center owner and then closed it to being a wife, then straight to reality TV, people don’t know the business side of me. But that’s what I lean on. That’s what I’ll do. Even when reality TV is gone. So for me, being an entrepreneur is very important. It’s something that when you have a dream or you have an idea, you build off of it. You work hard, and you stick to it.” “The Real Housewives of Atlanta”...
Diarra Bousso said goodbye to Wall Street to find fulfillment as an entrepreneur. DIARRABLU Bousso is the founder of DIARRABLU, a conscious lifestyle brand that uses creative mathematics and AI to design collections that reduce textile waste by more than 60%, according to her LinkedIn profile. Before launching the brand, Bousso spent years in finance on Wall Street. She traded more than $1 billion in assets during that time, she wrote in a LinkedIn post. However, she walked away from it all to pursue her creative aspirations and passion for math. “If your heart is not happy, long term, you’re just destroying anything that could work for you,” Bousso told Essence in 2025. Journey To Entrepreneurship At 23, she became a painter and traveled the world, and later became a math teacher. Working with various Black and brown female students, she observed that they were not engaging in class but became energized when she introduced color, pattern, and textiles, Essence reports. This...
Founder Julian Addo is fighting to maintain control of her beauty company, Adwoa Beauty, amid mounting legal and financial challenges. Addo launched Adwoa Beauty in 2017 and has retail partnerships with Sephora in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, as well as Cult Beauty UK, Amazon, and its direct-to-consumer website. In 2022, it raised $4 million in seed funding from Pendulum Holdings, according to Forbes. In an interview with AFROTECH™, Addo said funding was exhausted within three years and acknowledged strategic missteps, including overspending on packaging and failing to build the right team to scale. She said those financial pressures intensified when the company sought bridge funding. According to Addo, the initial terms offered by an investor were “super unfavorable,” prompting her to decline them. But after unsuccessfully raising capital elsewhere, the company returned to its only investor. However, it was too late, and the investor acknowleged “there’s no more...
Monica Cornitcher is keeping her late friend’s legacy alive through their cocktail brand, lighting up the market. Inga Dyer was Cornitcher’s close friend for more than 30 years. The pair met while attending Howard University in the 1990s, where they also pledged Delta Sigma Theta. In their respective careers, Dyer became an entertainment lawyer, and Cornitcher built expertise in mergers and acquisitions and business transformation while leading her own company for nearly 25 years. At the time, they did not realize their skills would eventually lead them to start a business together, though Cornitcher felt entrepreneurship was always her path and never worked in corporate again after turning 28. The progression of their entrepreneurship journey together was planted during the wake of COVID-19, Cornitcher shared in an interview with AFROTECH™. She had been in Atlanta but moved to California to be closer to family, and Dyer already lived in California . By default, the pair was hanging...
Series has officially opened its seed round after the close of its pre-seed round at $5.1 million, TechCrunch reports. Series is a professional network for Gen Z and the first AI social platform on iMessage, according to its founders, Nathaneo Johnson and Sean Hargrow, who launched the venture in 2024. Users are highly engaged on the platform. In 2025, Johnson noted more than 20,000 messages had been sent and received within a week, as AFROTECH™ previously reported. More recent data from Johnson reveals Series has more than 750 active campuses using the platform, and it is retaining more than 83% of active users. “Higher than Facebook during their early days,” Johnson said on LinkedIn, referring to the retention rate. Series announced its pre-seed round had reached $3.1 million in 2025, with the close on April 24, 2026. This was the most VC raised by Ivy League students, according to a separate AFROTECH™ article. TechCrunch reports the pre-seed round closed at $5.1 million, with...
Celebrity-backed Dr. Bombay Ice Cream continues to reach new heights. As AFROTECH™ previously reported, the Hip-Hop-style ice cream brand was co-founded in 2023 by Snoop Dogg and his son Cordell Broadus (chief marketing officer). Thanks to the brand’s inaugural seven flavors: Strawberry Cream Dream, Baked Blueberry Muffin, Tropical Sherbet Swizzle, Peanut Butter Jelly Time, Iced Out Orange Cream, Syrupy Waffle Sundaze, and S’more’s Vibes, the venture had generated more than $10 million in revenue by December 2024. Broadus previously said Dr. Bombay Ice Cream is driven by a shared goal of building wealth and a legacy that dates back generations through his great-grandfather and grandfather. “It starts with my great-grandfather in Mississippi,” Broadus told Blavity in a previous article. “He owned a dairy farm, and we’re not, you know, using those recipes or nothing like that, but just the mentality of being a Black man in the ’50s and ’60s, owning land, owning , you know, things that...
This Oklahoma couple is behind Love Mobile, The Cellphone Company That Gives Back®. Koddi Dunn and Wade Dunn Jr. have joined forces in business, bringing experience in their respective fields. Koddi has worked across the marketing, media, telecommunications, and nonprofit sectors and has assisted companies such as Meta, Greenwood, Coinbase, and Google through both contract and direct-hire engagements, according to her LinkedIn profile. Wade is a business and workforce strategy architect who has worked with Fortune 500 companies, innovation teams, and founders across technology , telecom, and workforce development over the past decade, notes his LinkedIn. The couple shares a mission to blend connectivity with philanthropy. In 2024, Koddi (CEO) and Wade (COO) founded Love Mobile®, a mobile network operator that invests a portion of its customers’ monthly bills into social causes like “education, stronger neighborhoods, cleaner environments, and care for the ones without a voice,”...
Entrepreneurship is generational for founder Alexa Christina Rice. Her grandmother, Eunice Walker Johnson, was married to John H. Johnson, who took a $500 loan, with his mother’s furniture as collateral, to launch Johnson Publishing Co. (JPC) in Chicago, per the company. The venture’s portfolio included Ebony and Jet magazines, which drew in millions of readers at its peak, WBEZ Chicago reports. John was also one of the first Black self-made millionaires in the U.S., the outlet notes. Fashion Fair Cosmetics Eunice was forging her own lane as well. She is the mastermind behind the Ebony Fashion Fair, a traveling fashion show launched in 1958 to showcase rising Black designers and couture pieces from the U.S. and Europe. Ebony Fashion Fair also raised more than $55 million for Black organizations, per WBEZ Chicago. In 1973, Eunice launched Fashion Fair Cosmetics, which catered to darker skin tones and was sold worldwide at stores including Neiman Marcus and Printemps, according to the...