Service Titan raises $80m series B from Iconic Capital

GLENDALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ServiceTitan, the leading provider of business management software for home service businesses, including residential plumbing, HVAC, and electrical service providers, announced it has completed an $80 million Series B funding round led by ICONIQ Capital.

ServiceTitan closes $80 Million Series B funding led by ICONIQ Capital

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ServiceTitan provides a state-of-the-art software platform that allows home service businesses of any size to effortlessly manage and streamline their operations, improve customer service and grow their business. The company’s end-to-end solution includes CRM, intelligent dispatching, seamless invoice management, integrated marketing analytics and comprehensive reporting, designed specifically to meet the needs of home service professionals and allow them to focus on what matters most – getting the job done.

“Home service providers are critically underserved when it comes to advanced technology that can dramatically improve their operations and meet the specific needs and demands of their businesses,” said Ara Mahdessian, co-founder and CEO of ServiceTitan. “With this investment, we are looking forward to further enhancing our platform and continuing to work closely with business owners and partners to deliver the very best technology that equips our clients with the necessary tools to succeed.”

Will Griffith, Partner at ICONIQ, commented: “Ara and Vahe’s unique combination of rich technological expertise, deep connections to the home services industry and unrelenting focus on customer success have empowered them to build a suite of compelling solutions that deliver significant and measurable value to customers. We are excited to partner with ServiceTitan and support this great team as they continue to achieve significant growth and strengthen their position as the leading provider of business management software to the home services industry.”

This latest funding round will enable ServiceTitan to expand and strengthen its capabilities across the ServiceTitan platform, including the recently launched ServiceTitan Marketplace. Backing from ICONIQ and other leading technology investors will also accelerate the introduction of innovative features currently under development, including online booking with top review sites, more robust inventory management, integration with enterprise-grade accounting systems, enhanced reporting, and other developments on ServiceTitan’s product roadmap.

“Our new software developments are designed with the home services business owner in mind,” said Vahe Kuzoyan, co-founder and President of ServiceTitan. “Partnering with these businesses to improve efficiencies is core to the ServiceTitan mission, and we know we have the strongest product to deliver results. It takes significant investment to stay at the forefront of technology, and we are committed to hiring the best developers and team members to continue improving and expanding the tools available to our clients. This funding will help us expand our product, customer success and support teams -- recruiting the best and brightest talent from across the country.”

ServiceTitan’s co-founders are both sons of home service contractors and have a passion for and unique insight into the industry. Founded in 2012 to help residential contractors better manage their businesses, ServiceTitan now supports over a thousand home service companies. On average, ServiceTitan customers increased quarterly revenue 20% year over year within one year of switching to ServiceTitan.1

Home services companies stand to gain – or lose – a lot based on the software they choose. Few know that better than ServiceTitan customer Rapid Repair Experts. “ServiceTitan’s platform has transformed the way we manage our business and given us the technology to provide a seamless and modern customer experience that is crucial to success in our rapidly changing industry,” said Dave Dombrowski, General Manager of Rapid Repair Experts. “The ServiceTitan team works with us to understand the specific needs of our business and provides the tools we need to operate and grow. We are very excited about the new funding, which will allow ServiceTitan to take their current application to an even higher level and create new features based on our feedback. It is a true win-win situation.”

Commenting on the importance of maintaining ServiceTitan’s unique employee culture, newly appointed VP of People, Sheily Chhabria, said, “We are committed to building a world-class culture, scaling our philanthropic outreach and offering our people unparalleled opportunities to grow.”

ServiceTitan is the preferred software for some of the fastest growing, independent home service companies, franchise systems Mr. Rooter®, Mr. Electric®, and Aire Serv®, as well as best practice organizations Nexstar Network™, QSC®, Service Nation Alliance®, and Service Roundtable®.

About ServiceTitan

ServiceTitan is a mobile, cloud-based software platform that helps home service companies streamline operations, improve customer service, and grow their business. ServiceTitan’s end-to-end solution for the multi-billion-dollar residential home services industry includes CRM, intelligent dispatch, comprehensive reporting, marketing management tools, mobile solution for field techs, and QuickBooks integration. ServiceTitan brings a fully operational modern SaaS infrastructure to an industry traditionally underserved by software. ServiceTitan is the preferred software for hundreds of the world’s most successful plumbing, HVAC, and electrical companies. For more information about ServiceTitan, visit ServiceTitan.com or connect via LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

About ICONIQ Capital

ICONIQ Capital is a global multi-family office and merchant bank for a group of influential families.

1 According to a 2015 survey of 100 clients

Meal-delivery platform Deliveroo is at the cutting edge of the gig economy, using an army of contractors on wheels to cater to the appetite for convenience

http://specialreports.theaustralian.com.au/727000/Fast-Food/

 

ONCE A FORTNIGHT, Levi Aron straps on his colourful lycra gear – the kind that can be seen a mile away and lights up like a moving disco ball when hit with headlights – and pedals the streets of Melbourne delivering food to parents too tired to cook or executives too drained to get off the couch.

“It’s the exciting part,” Aron says. “You pedal up, lock up your bike and take your backpack off, and start heading up the path or the stairs. As you knock on the door, it’s always entertaining to see who is on the other side. Could be a tired business person, or often you will get people having a real big weekend and they are just in their PJs at seven o’clock at night from the morning before … I haven’t seen a customer who has opened up the door and is disappointed.’’

Aron is a foot soldier in the gig economy, a sprawling mass of humanity all over the world turning pedals, driving a car or picking up a casual freelance job to earn a living – all made possible by the proliferation of digital devices like smartphones.

Need a lift, book an Uber; an IKEA wardrobe assembled, surf Airtasker. But if it’s hot food from your favourite restaurant you want, then it could be Deliveroo or one of the many other on-demand food delivery services whose app you swipe.

Many gig economy workers have abandoned the traditional nine-to-five employment routine to take on task-by-task jobs in whatever role is on offer. They are loyal to no single employer, only to the job they are doing in the moment.

Aron, who has a background in design, manufacturing and the fashion sector, is a little different from the typical freelancer, however. In July 2015, following a senior role at Gabby and Hezi Leibovich’s Catch Group – one of Australia’s leading e-commerce platforms – he joined Deliveroo and his day job now is country manager in Australia for the UK-based company.

One of the fastest-growing food delivery businesses, it is booking around 30 per cent month-on-month sales growth in Australia. But managing that explosive growth doesn’t stop Aron jumping on his bike, the Deliveroo bag perched on his back like an oddly shaped snail shell.

“I enjoy putting on the gear – safety gear, the reflectives, backpack and shirt – and what I’ll do while I’m standing in the restaurant is speak to the restaurant manager – ‘Hey, how is it going? How are you finding orders tonight?’ I really like trying to understand what their business is and the benefits Deliveroo is bringing,” he says. “But I also like riding with the other riders, seeing how they are doing on the night … and just talking to them about how they are enjoying it.’’

Spending three or four hours a fortnight in the saddle and waiting for a pick-up in a steaming hot kitchen puts Aron directly in touch with Deliveroo’s key stakeholders – the restaurants that sign up to the business and pay a commission to the company for every delivery. But the real fun is handing over the food at the other end.

“There is nothing more pleasing, absolutely nothing more pleasing, than knocking on someone’s door and handing over the delivery bag with piping hot food to a customer who is just starving,’’ he says. “You have all different types of customers; you never know who will open the door ... you can get a mum with two or three kids gripping onto her who just needs to get that food and make life easier for that night, or you can get some really exhausted business person, could be someone coming back from a sporting event or travelling – it’s a different experience every single time.’’

Deliveroo was founded in 2013 in London by Will Shu and Greg Orlowski. Shu, while an investment banker at Morgan Stanley, became very tired of the limited options – kebabs and pizzas – that could be delivered for all-nighters when he was working long hours at London’s Canary Wharf. He went back to his home base in the US to do an MBA and later, back in London, exploited a gap in the food market with the help of Orlowski, a computer programmer, who later left the company.

Deliveroo recently raised $US275 million, to give it a value 

of around $US1 billion. Now in more than 130 cities in 12 countries, it has been joined by other food delivery platforms such as Foodora and UberEATS, all cashing in on the on-demand food industry.

In Australia, Deliveroo holds the largest market share, delivering “thousands of meals every night” in Melbourne (its headquarters), Sydney, Brisbane, Gold Coast and Perth. This month it added Adelaide and Canberra.

It has 30,000 bike and scooter riders worldwide and more than 20,000 restaurants on its books. The service is cashless: restaurants, riders and customers use iPads and smartphones to pay for orders, pay the rider or pay a commission to Deliveroo.

The Australian operation has 100-plus employees (1000 globally), but the industry’s growth is tightly linked to the gig economy as workers look for an extra revenue stream outside their full-time jobs, or students and part time workers vie for work. Its disruptive model, founded on bikers operating in effect as independent contractors paid for each meal they drop off, has been heavily criticised here and overseas.

Australian unions and labour lawyers argue that the business model rests on underpaying workers and have pledged to investigate its hiring processes. In Britain, where they dominate the London scene, Deliveroo riders staged a mass protest last year over a threat of lower wages following changes to their pay structure.

Its Australian boss rejects the claims. “We are confident with our model, and the way our model works and working with independent contractors. Unfortunately there was a lot of misinformation last year: our riders get paid per drop, so they are not being paid per hour but by the drop, per delivery. So what we do with our drivers is we work with them to educate them about when those busy times are – we know, obviously, it’s busy on a Thursday night or a Friday night, Saturday night – and which suburbs are busy, where you want to go. We work with our riders to allow them to make as much money as they possibly can while working as a Deliveroo rider.’’

Deliveroo also offers the ultimate flexibility on employer loyalty. In short, there isn’t any. Deliveroo riders can work for rival food delivery services and can even wear their Deliveroo gear when doing so.

Says Aron: ‘’When we speak to them (our riders) – and we speak to them every day – what they want is flexibility; they want to be able to ride when they want, sit at home when they want, take on a job when they want. And especially being part of the on-demand community, our riders might be riding for us during the day, might be riding for another business. So during meal times they might ride for Deliveroo, and if they are really enjoying riding around having a courier lifestyle, they can also ride for a different company another time.

“We have riders who ride for Deliveroo who also ride for our competitors. They might wear the Deliveroo equipment and deliver to another competitor and vice versa, and that is exactly what we celebrate – that is, the ability of our riders to have flexibility in what they want to do.’’

The key links in the chain are the restaurants, which place their food in a Deliveroo backpack and their reputation in the hands of a Deliveroo rider, who must deliver the food before it gets cold or spoils.

This was the challenge facing Rockpool Dining Group chief executive Thomas Pash, who wanted to link up with a food delivery service but at the same time protect some of the best-known and respected restaurant brands in the country.

“We looked at which foods travel well and which don’t, and we saw that there were some of our brands we can’t travel … and really keep it at that extreme premium level. But there were other foods – burgers, pizza, Asian, sushi – that travel extremely well,” he says. “So we can get that to the customer and still have an amazing experience.”

Pash says the restaurants within his group that are on the Deliveroo platform have increased their sales by 7-15 per cent – using a delivery channel that the business would not normally have had access to.

The platform offers a simple business proposition for restaurants, giving them access to a sector that they ordinarily would not be able to enter, or in which they have had little interest because of the costs of organising their own drivers and infrastructure.

“If a restaurant has more capacity in the kitchen (than just serving its tables) then we go to see them and say: you have a fantastic brand, we could put you onto our platform, we could extend your reach to your customers who may be too busy at work or home to have the ability to come out to you,” says Aron. “While they come to you once or twice a month, this way we are making your food more accessible.

“We have created a new category for them – of delivery

Retail Tech innovation is active in Israel

In February, the Fung Global Retail & Technology team went on a four-day innovation technology tour to Israel. We met with more than 25 startups and led panel discussions on innovation at the 2017 OurCrowd Global Investor Summit. The trip impacted how we are thinking about innovation and what is happening in retail right now. Here are the three things you need to know about Israel and retail tech innovation:

1. More money was invested Israeli high-tech startups in 2016 than in Silicon Valley companies

The Israeli retail technology startup scene is booming. Really booming. More than $4.8 billion was invested in Israel-based high-tech startups in 2016, a record total—and more than was invested in Silicon Valley companies. This was a 120% increase over 2013. Due to the disruption from Amazon, retail technology is one of the greatest areas of focus for the country. Some of the top trends driving investment are the mainstreaming of artificial intelligence and machine learning, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) becoming critical business tools, and the development of voice recognition, image recognition, digital health and agriculture technology.

Source: 2017 OurCrowd Global Investor Summit Presentation

The growing Israeli startup ecosystem is being driven by investments from Alibaba, Apple, Facebook and Walmart, among others. The Israeli government is also offering tax breaks and incentives. According to Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, four years ago, there were 250 technology companies in Jerusalem, but today there are 600. Barkat also said that there are great opportunities in Jerusalem for young companies that want to locate and grow their operations in the city.

2. Multinational companies are innovating with Israeli startups

Executives from a number of multinational corporations, including Honda, HSBC, Merck, Porsche, Shell and Tyco, are partnering with Israeli startups to find solutions, as startups can breathe life into companies that have not previously focused on innovation. Shell has approached innovation with an eye on the future of energy consumption and an “innovate or die” mentality. The company is looking at consumer and market behavior regarding energy consumption, and its innovation models include in-house, external and hybrid solutions. Using external partners, the company created the FarePilot app, which helps taxi, Uber and Lyft drivers find riders faster. The app pulls data from social media and weather sites, and combines that information with other analytics.

Honda has announced a partnership with OurCrowd to work with Israeli startups in the Israeli car tech ecosystem. Innogy, a German energy company that was facing severe challenges, has explored startup options in AR, VR and artificial intelligence.

3. Adidas and GE are hosting accelerators in order to innovate

Adidas launched the LeAD Sports Technology Accelerator in partnership with OurCrowd. The accelerator is designed to discover high-potential innovation in sports-related products and services on a worldwide scale. LeAD’s accelerator program is built on the legacy of Adidas founder Adi Dassler and aims to “create tomorrow’s legacies,” while building on the core competencies and history of the company.

Other companies, including General Electric (GE), are also launching their own accelerator programs. “Israel is an easy place to do this,” says Oded Meirav, Manager, Israel Technology Center, GE Global Research. GE has launched numerous innovation programs in Israel, including GE Digital Israel, GE Industrial Israel and GE Global Israel. The company has had to reinvent itself twice, once in the aftermath of 2001 and then again since 2008, and it is leveraging startups to become more agile and nimble. GE recognizes that it is not the only game in town, so it is partnering with startups that excel and take risks and is looking to inject that spirit into the entire enterprise. It has already launched its own industrial Internet of Things by partnering with 16 other companies.

Written by

Deborah WeinswigGlobal Analyst Specializing in Retail Innovation | Technology | Fashion

Five gems from angel investor Vivian Stewart to make your startup stand out from the crowd

First seen on Startupsmart  http://www.startupsmart.com.au/advice/five-tips-from-angel-investor-vivian-stewart-to-make-your-startup-stand-out-from-the-crowd/#.WMcAtUkSjQQ.twitter

 

Growth in a business generally means cash burn and inevitable requires funding. 

You need to convince someone to hand over their hard-earned money and you need to convince them why they should do so in a simple, compelling, and realistic manner. 

Your average angel investor probably receives hundreds of startup pitches every single year. These are often from hopeful entrepreneurs who have interesting ideas with at least some commercial potential. Most pitches will get lost in the crowd of pitches because the founder hasn’t taken any steps towards making his or her pitch “investor ready”.

Below are some simple steps you can take to avoid this fate, and have your pitch stand out from the crowd in 2017.

1. CREATE A TARGETED LIST OF INVESTORS

Every good marketer will tell you that your target list of prospects is just as important as the quality of your product offering. Because if you’re telling the right story but to the wrong audience, your chances of success will always be limited.

Begin by creating a targeted list of investors who understand your industry and product. These investors will be far better able to see the value you can bring to the table than someone who can’t even pronounce what you do.

Once you’ve done that then also try to understand what is important to these investors, so you can tailor your pitch.

Depending on the level of sophistication of the investors you pitch to, they may even tell you exactly what they want to know and in what format!

2. SCREAM YOUR STORY FROM THE MOUNTAIN TOP

It took music streaming service Pandora 300 unsuccessful pitches before its founder, Tim Westergreen, eventually found someone to invest in his idea.

So while a targeted list is important, it may also be necessary to cast a wider net if success isn’t immediate. Reach out to angel investors and groups, build relationships at networking events, and leverage the power of word of mouth to get your story out there.

Also, take a moment to seek advice from other entrepreneurs who have successfully raised capital. You never know whose interest may be piqued, and what doors may open as a result.

3. ADD THE “SIZZLE” FACTOR TO YOUR PITCH DECK

So you know who to reach out to – but do you know what to say once you have their attention?

A marketing mantra many swear by is to sell the “sizzle” not the “steak”. Investors are people too, and can be impressed, influenced, and persuaded if they are sold a whole experience around your offering instead of just presenting them with the straight facts.

Every angel investor and VC probably sees upwards of hundreds of sales decks every single year. What they most likely don’t see hundreds of are compelling sales decks that catch their attention and inspire emotion.

So never underestimate the value of working with a professional salesperson or communicator to ensure the language, imagery, and storyline in your pitch deck creates that all important sizzle and gets some emotion flowing.

4. ENSURE YOUR “STEAK” IS CLEAR AND REALISTIC

While focusing on sizzle, the steak must also not be forgotten.

Even the most emotionally-charged investor will still need some solid figures to justify injecting capital. And when it comes to these figures, potential investors can smell BS from a kilometre away.

Ensure your figures are accurate if they are backwards-looking, or realistic if they are forwards-looking.

Be ready to stand behind your calculations, and explain how you justify any estimates using industry comparisons, market reports and consumer spending patterns.

While this is most vital for pre-revenue startups looking to launch, slipping up on the numbers at any stage of your business is sure to have potential investors suddenly feeling very nervous about you.

Get deeply across the data and the key metrics for your industry, and be prepared to describe the traction you have and your plan to achieve more – in simple language.

5) PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE SO YOU SHINE, SHINE, SHINE

More than your actual idea, there is one thing investors most want to believe in – you, the founder.

This is because a large proportion of successful startups are now miles away from where they were originally pitched.

Twitter began as a podcast directory, Pinterest was a mobile shopping app, and Android was originally pitched as an operating system for cameras.

Because it sometimes takes a strategic pivot to find success, investors are often far more interested in the person driving the startup than its actual offering.

They want evidence of your personality, confidence, intelligence, and people skills. They want to see robustness in the face of adversity, and an ability to create excitement and buy-in to your offering and vision.

So if you’re stumbling through a presentation you’ve barely practiced and can’t easily answer questions about, it won’t matter how great your idea is, because you won’t be allowing yourself to shine.

Take advantage of community pitch events to hone your style in a pressured public forum.

Remember, as Winston Churchill once said, “Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm”.

This must be your approach when capital raising. Learn and grow from every step of the journey toward your capital raising goal, whether it be backwards, forwards, or sideways.

It may be as old and cheesy as sayings can possibly go, but failing to prepare means preparing to fail.

Avoid that mistake in 2017, and you could be on your way to serious growth before you know it.

Vivian Stewart is a co-founder and committee member of Sydney Angels. 

 

Prospa raises $25m to focus on Growth

GREG MOSHAL AND BEAU BERTOLI

Prospa, Australia’s leading online lender to small business, has secured $25 million in growth funding led by AirTree Ventures – one of Australia’s most successful tech-focused venture capital firm.

Prospa will use the funds to accelerate its market leadership: boosting technology, product expansion and distribution, ramping up talent acquisition and building a world-class brand.

Greg Moshal, Founder and joint CEO of Prospa (and fellow ex Durbanite!!) said continued interest from top technology investors like Airtree, and the scale of their investment, recognises the difficulties small businesses have in accessing finance, and will support Prospa in its growth phase.

“We’re driving a fundamental change in the way 2 million small business owners in Australia access finance." 

“We’ve now provided over 10,000 loans and put over $250m into the Australian small business economy. All the while maintaining our ability to wow our customers, which continues to be proven through a stellar customer satisfaction score of over 90%.

Why has Prospa attracted this funding?

AirTree Ventures’ managing partner, Craig Blair, said “Greg and Beau have built a world class team and are obsessing over how to solve customer problems in a better, faster way. They are exactly the kind of founders we want to partner with.”

“This is a coming of age of the fintech sector in Australia. Prospa is a real business solving a real problem, winning awards with tremendous customer and market feedback while achieving profitability from the very early days,” Mr Blair said.

Prospa passed $250 million in loan originations and has added a series of strategic partnerships with Westpac, Reckon and Mortgage Choice coming on board to offer Prospa’s small business loans to their customers.

Co-Founder and Joint CEO Beau Bertoli said “strong partnerships are key to Prospa’s rapid growth and future success.

“To reach more small business owners, we’ll continue to invest in partnerships with trusted brands who share our values of putting their small business customers first."

“Small businesses are the driving force of the Australian economy. We’ve solved a huge challenge of access to finance for them by building the best local lending platform, making it faster and easier to get a small business loan than it ever has been,” Bertoli said.

Venture Pulse

Snap officially sets stock price at $17, raising $3.4 billion in IPO

Snap, the parent company of messaging app Snapchat, today disclosed that it has priced its stock at $17 per share, effectively raising $3.4 billion in its initial public offering (IPO). Snap will start trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol SNAP tomorrow. Snap’s underwriters are getting 30 days to buy an additional 30 million shares of the company’s Class A common stock, according to a statement. Snap first publicly filed its form S-1, kicking off the process of going public, at the beginning of February. Two weeks later, Snap set an initial price range of $14 to $16 per share and said it was aiming to sell 200 million shares, meaning it would raise between $2.8 billion and $3.2 billion. But today Snap is going slightly above its estimated range.  [ Venture Beat ]

Lyft seeks $6 billion valuation in funding round

Lyft is out pitching to investors while competitor Uber surrounds itself in controversy. The Wall Street Journal first reported that they are chatting about a $500 million round. We’re hearing that they are targeting a roughly $6 billion valuation, slightly above the $5.5 billion they were valued at in their last private round. The timing makes sense given the failed sale process last year, and while its likely coincidental, it won’t hurt that Uber is in the midst of a never-ending PR nightmare. Lyft has often been branded as the underdog and the friendlier of the two companies.
[ Tech Crunch ]

A startup that's building an unprecedented test for cancer just raised $900 million from major drugmakers and Amazon

A startup that wants to build a blood test to screen for cancer just raised more than $900 million.Grail was created in January of last year by the gene-sequencing giant Illumina, and it was originally funded by its former parent company and a group of Silicon Valley investorsincluding Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Google Ventures. [ Business Insider ]
Funding history : 
Mar, 2017 $900M / Series B
Jan, 2016 $100M / Series A

LATEST FUNDING

Renovate America Closes $200 Million Credit Facility

Renovate America, a leading U.S. provider of home-improvement financing, announced today that it has closed a $200 million credit facility with Bank of America N.A. to support the continued expansion of the HERO Program, the nation's largest form of Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing. The credit facility will provide Renovate America with enhanced liquidity and will further diversify the company's funding profile. Renovate America now has five warehouse lenders in aggregate, up from three last year. [ PR Newswire ]
Funding history : 
Feb, 2017 $200M / Debt Financing
Oct, 2015 $90M / Private Equity
Jul, 2014 $50M / Private Equity
Oct, 2012 $6M / Series C

BlueVine Secures $75M Financing from Fortress

BlueVine, a Redwood City, CA-based provider of online working capital financing to small and medium-sized businesses, secured a warehouse credit line of up to $75m. The credit line was provided by Fortress Credit Corp. and/or funds managed by affiliates of Fortress Investment Group LLC. The company intends to use the funds to expand its line of credit financing solution Flex Credit more than four times in 2017. [ Finsmes ]
Funding history : 
Feb, 2017 $75M / Debt Financing
Dec, 2016 $49M / Series D
Jan, 2016 $40M / Series C
Sep, 2015 undisclosed amount / Series B
Jan, 2015 $18.5M / Series B
Aug, 2014 $1.5M / Venture
Mar, 2014 $4M / Series A
Aug, 2013 undisclosed amount / Series A

In liquid biopsy race, Freenome lands $65 million, led by Andreessen Horowitz

Freenome, a two-year-old liquid biopsy diagnosis platform that detects the cell-free DNA sequencing of cancer, has raised a huge Series A round — $65 million — led by Andreessen Horowitz, which also led the company’s $5.5 million seed round less than a year ago. Other investors in the deal include GV, Polaris Partners, Innovation Endeavors, Spectrum 28, Asset Management Ventures, Charles River Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, Allen and Company and earlier backers Data Collective and Founders Fund. [ Tech Crunch ]
Funding history : 
Mar, 2017 $65M / Series A
Jun, 2016 $5.55M / Seed 

Logistics Startup Blackbuck Raise $30 Million Series C Fund

Logistics Startup Blackbuck raised $30 Million in Series C funding from clutch of new investors. The new investors of the startup are US based investors named Capital Sands and International Financial Corp which is an arm of World Bank. The new investors have invested $10 Million in the startup. [ Indian ceo ]
Funding history : 
Feb, 2017 $30M / Series C
Dec, 2015 $25M / Series B
Jul, 2015 $5M / Series A

Klook nets $30m series B from Sequoia to grow hottest sector in travel

Tours and trips are perhaps the hottest part of the travel industry right now – as evidenced by an Airbnb acquisition last year before the tech giant rolled out its own Trips service. Eric Gnock Fah has been in the space since before it was cool. When he started Klook in early 2014 with two other co-founders, the crew wanted to fill in the bits not covered by all the flight and hotel-booking sites – the actual fun part of the holiday. So they started connecting with tour and experience providers around the world, giving users an easy way to book, say, a ride on the “Sagano Romantic Train” through cherry orchards in Kyoto, or a New York helicopter ride. [ Tech In Asia ]
Funding history : 
Mar, 2017 $30M / Series B
Oct, 2015 $5M / Series A
Jun, 2015 $1.5M / Seed

Scottish cybersecurity startup ZoneFox raises £3.6 million in Series A round

Scottish cybersecurity firm ZoneFox has raised £3.6 million in a Series A round led by Archangels, with participation from The Scottish Investment Bank and TriCap. The Edinburgh-based company builds security software, namely its Augmented Intelligence product, focused on insider threats in businesses in sectors like finance, health, and gaming. [ Tech.eu ]
Funding history : 
Mar, 2017 €3.6M / Series A
Nov, 2015 £650k / Seed

$23M - Muse Bio gathers $23 mln Series B

$21M - Nearpod raises $21 million to turn mobile devices into a teaching tool rather than classroom distraction

€15M - Galway medtech firm Atlantic Therapeutics raises €15m

$14.5M - Singapore: GIC leads $14.5m Series B investment in Chinese co-work space 5Lmeet 

$10M - Data analytics startup Incorta raises $10 million led by GV

$8.5 - Regent Education Secures $8.5M in Funding

$1.1M - Japanese geo-analytics startup Nightley secures $1.1M funding in series A round

EXITS 

Yelp acquires restaurant waiting list tech startup Nowait in a $40 million all-cash deal

Yelp has acquired restaurant technology startup Nowait in an all-cash deal valued at $40 million. Founded out of Pittsburgh in 2010, Nowait integrates its technology with that of restaurants to streamline and optimize front-of-house operations, including table turnover and waiting lists. The company had raised around $22 million in funding since its inception, including a strategic $8 million investment Yelp made in the company back in August. The $40 million Yelp is paying for Nowait includes the stake it already acquired. [ Venture Beat ]

Time Inc. sets deadline for bids from potential buyers

Time Inc. has asked those interested in buying the media company to turn in bids by next week. Five companies have expressed interest in acquiring all of Time Inc., but the company is also considering taking an investment from private investors and may choose not to proceed with a sale at all, according to a company official with knowledge of the potential deal who was not authorized to comment publicly. [ USA Today ]

China’s Qunar to delist from NASDAQ after completing sale to private equity firm

Tokyo-listed Mixi acquires photo service provider Compath.me 

PE-backed OBI4wan buys Buzzcapture

Berlin-based IoT success story relayr acquires AI data security startup Neokami

Hamilton Lane IPO rises 12.6% on first day of trading

FUND RAISED

Lux Capital announces fresh $400 million fund to back ‘contrarians and outsiders’ from science and tech

Silverton Partners has set a $100 million goal for its fifth venture capital fund, according to a securities filing, a big new pool for local companies to tap into when searching for growth capital. It would the largest investment vehicle yet for the Austin-based VC firm and a promising sign for the local startup funding scene, which is still without a dominant player after Austin Ventures in early 2015 pulled back from early-stage funding. [ Venture Beat ]