Augment – Details, episodes & analysis

Nektar.ai, a B2B productivity startup, has raised an additional $6 million seed funding round led by B Capital Group, 3One4 Capital, and Nexus Venture Partners. Several well-known Go To Market players in the US-Asia cross-border SaaS ecosystem took part in the round.

McAfee Enterprise has announced the launch of MVISION Private Access, an integrated strategy for granular ‘Zero Trust’ access and extending data and threat security capabilities to private apps hosted across hybrid IT environments. 

Baxter International Inc., a global medical products firm, is partnering with Amazon Web Services (AWS). As part of a company-wide push to increase cloud usage, Baxter has extended its multi-year strategic partnership with Amazon Web Services.

Bridgestone Americas enters a definitive agreement to purchase Azuga Holdings for $391M from shareholders to strengthen its Silicon Valley presence and accelerate its progress towards delivering sustainable tire-centric and mobility solutions. 

Salesforce announced a definitive acquisition agreement with Servicetrace (financials undisclosed) to integrate it with a previously acquired company, MuleSoft. The transaction would close this October and the new Robotics Process Automation (RPA) capabilities of Servicetrace would enhance Salesforce’s Einstein Automate solution and enable end-to-end workflow automation.

Nozomi Networks has announced a $100M in Series D and a pre-IPO funding round led by Triangle Peak Partners. It states that this has been a year of record growth, topping a 110 percent increase in annual recurring revenue and a two-fold increase in customer base.

Cloud identity solutions provider Saviynt has announced that its risk analytics, identity governance and other technologies would now be available as a managed service via Deloitte’s Identity+ Platform as it expands its strategic partnership with the latter to offer cloud identity solutions to enterprises. 

Square, a payments software firm, has bought Afterpay, an Australian “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) startup, for $29 million. Square’s existing Seller and Cash App business divisions will be linked with Afterpay, allowing even the “smallest of businesses” to accept BNPL.

Germany’s Mambu has unveiled an all-digital product for small and medium enterprises (SME) to help them cut down costs and time to market. It states that the pressure on SME lenders to offer an all-digital customer experience has increased today, driving the need for the new decision.

Paystand has raised $50M in Series C funding to redefine B2B payments. The company leverages cloud and blockchain technology to provide payments-as-a-service and looks to accelerate its shift towards business-centric payments infrastructure using the proceeds from the funding.

Blueprint Equity and ScOp Venture Capital led an $8 million Series A investment in Tovuti LMS Inc., a SaaS LMS. Tovuti LMS was built on the belief that creating learning management systems should be simple for administrators to set up and effectively use. 

Prodigal, a debt management and collection firm, has acquired $12M in Series A funding to expand its suite of cognitive workflow and optimization solutions, which enable businesses to boost efficiency, improve customer care, and boost profitability.

DataGrail integrates with HubSpot to help enterprises manage privacy compliance efficiently, complying with the emerging data privacy laws, saving them time, money, and engineering resources.

Cisco AppDynamics Expands Global Software-as-a-Service Offering With Five New Locations.The addition of five new locations across Africa, Asia, Europe and South America brings the total number of AppDynamics global SaaS locations to nine. AppDynamics offers customers the broadest scale and reach of global SaaS support of any Application Performance Monitoring and Observability companies. Global expansion further provides AppDynamics customers with increased flexibility, scale and cost efficiencies, as well as greater data residency compliance and security.Qapita raises $5 million in funding round led by MassMutual Ventures. Qapita, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup provides ESOPs and cap table management solutions to private companies.
 The Qapita funding round also saw participation of Hyderabad-based venture capital firm Endiya Partners and a clutch of angel investors.The SaaS startup plans to use the funds raised to hire engineering talent, accelerate product development and build clientele in India, Indonesia and Singapore. It currently has more than 30 employees.Ambry Hill Technologies Announced the Launch Of Their Cloud-Based ERP Software, Vista Suite.Traditionally, the process of switching from one ERP system to another included extracting data from the old system and importing it into the new system. This is often expensive, slow, and rarely produces good results.Ambry Hill’s alternative to this approach is to connect to the old dataset and integrate that information into the screens of Vista Suite so that it appears to be part of the system. ALTARA Ventures, a Singapore-based venture firm helmed by Koh Boon Hwee and investment veterans, joined the US$12.6 million Series A fundraise for US software startup FreeAgent. The round was led by Pelion Venture Partners and also joined by existing investor BlueRun Ventures.
With the funding, FreeAgent intends to deepen product development and ramp up go-to-market activities

Hawke Ventures raises $5.6M to back digital marketing startups. The firm is mostly focused on products that can be used by small and medium businesses. The firm’s focus is to build a definitive platform for Conversational Commerce. Hwake is trying to build a different venture firm that does not focus on what we think the next big idea is, but is focused on building actual technology that can be used by consumers.
Introvoke raises $2.7M to power online events that can be embedded anywhere. The funding was led by Struck Capital. The startup offers components like virtual stages, chat rooms and networking hubs, all customizable and embeddable on a customer’s website. Introvoke charges customers based on live event minutes, a model that it says is accessible to companies large and small.At Basis Set Ventures, merging venture capital and software development yields a $165 million new fund. That product development is one reason the firm has managed to stay relatively lean and was two times oversubscribed when it went out to raise its second fund, a $165 million.Currently Basis Set has at least three different programs, all aimed to recruit and nurture talent that typical Bay Area firms haven’t traditionally focused on. The first is its Persistence platform, which is designed to help women developers and founders network and nurture connections and foster ideas. The firm also has a service that it calls Founder Superpowers, to help entrepreneurs identify and develop areas of strength while looking for additional tools to augment their capabilities. Another key factor for the company is trying to find a more diverse set of founders with different backgrounds from the typical Silicon Valley biography.

ActiveCampaign raises $240M at a $3B valuation as marketing and sales automation come into focus for Small and medium businesses. The round was  led by  Tiger Global, with participation from another new backer Dragoneer, along with Susquehanna Growth Equity and Silversmith Capital Partners. This funding round represents a huge leap for ActiveCampaign.

Fraud prevention platform Sift raises $50M at over $1B valuation.  Insight Partners led the financing, which included participation from Union Square Ventures and Stripes. Sift was founded out of Y Combinator in 2011, and has raised a total of $157 million over its lifetime. Sift uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to automatically surmise whether an attempted transaction or interaction with a business online is authentic or potentially problematic.

E-commerce tracking platform AfterShip raises $66M in SeriesB. This was led by Tiger Global, with participation from Hillhouse Capital’s GL Ventures. The company’s software enables sellers to track shipments made through more than 740 carriers and handles more than 6 billion shipments each year.

Podcast recording platform Riverside.fm raises $9.5M. The round is led by Seven Seven Six. Riverside.fm is a remote video and audio platform that records lossless audio and 4K video tracks remotely to each user’s system, saving the end result from the kind of technical hiccups that come with spotty internet connections. The company says it plans to use the money to increase headcount and build out more features for the service.

BigID boosts Series D to $100M at $1.25B valuation, With $30M extension. The investment comes from private equity firm Advent International, and brings the total raised to more than $200 million across four rounds. The late-stage startup is attracting all of this capital by building a security and privacy platform.

Era Software raises $15.25M for enterprise data management. EraDB officially rebranded as Era Software as part of the Series A announcement. The new round of funding was led by Playground Global and brings total funding to Era Software up to $22 million. AppOmni raises $40 million in a Series B. The round was led by Scale Venture Partners, with Salesforce Ventures and ServiceNow Ventures, as well as previous backers ClearSky, Costanoa Ventures, Inner Loop Capital and Silicon Valley Data Capital.The company today integrates with more than 100 connectors, platforms used by developers and IT teams at companies to manage the apps that their businesses use, such as tools like Splunk and Sumo Logic. Through this, AppOmni is able to aggregate and normalize event data around those apps, in addition to deeper monitoring in cases where it can integrate with apps themselves.Per Diem raises $2.3M to help local businesses build subscription programs. The round of seed funding was led by Two Sigma Ventures. The startup is currently focused on New York, but it’s already working with businesses in Phoenix and Washington, D.C. 

Enterprise software firm Chargebee raises $125 million at a valuation of $1.4 Billion, making it India's newest unicorn, signaling the funding boom underway in India and continuing the wave of software unicorns.The round was co-led by Sapphire Ventures and existing investors Tiger Global, Insight Venture Partners and Steadview Capital. This also makes Chargebee the 11th unicorn to emerge from India in just four months of 2021.Grip Security raises $6 million seed round led by cybersecurity-focused YL Ventures, with participation from CrowdStrike CEO and co-founder George Kurtz and a group of other angel investors with deep roots in the cybersecurity industry. Grip Security currently has about 15 employees and plans to use the new funding to build out its platform with additional capabilities, especially around providing access governance and data governance to applications. The plan is to grow to 20 to 25 employees within the next year.Tel Aviv’s developer of financial planning and analysis tools, DataRails raises $18.5 million in a Series A round.The round was Led by Zeev Ventures Fund along with existing investors Vertex Ventures Israel and Innovation Endeavors , alongside undisclosed private investors. To date, the company has raised $28.5 million.Cape Privacy , a startup that allows companies to share sensitive data in a secure and encrypted way raises $20 million in  Series. Evolution Equity Partners led the round with participation from new investors Tiger Global Management, Ridgeline Partners and Downing Lane. Existing investors Boldstart Ventures, Version One Ventures, Haystack, Radical Ventures and a slew of individual investors also participated. The company has now raised approximately $25 million, including a $5 million seed investment.RippleMatch, a career recruiting platform, raises $23.5M funding.The round was led by Invus Opportunities with participation from Renegade Partners and Gaingels along with existing investors G20, Work-Bench, Alleycorp, Bullpen Capital and Accomplice. The company intends to use the funds to continue building out its intelligent hiring platform.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup Whatfix is in active talks to raise $80-90 million as a part of its Series D round, led by SoftBank Vision Fund II, at a valuation of $500-550 million.The talks with US-based Whatfix come a year after the startup raised $32 million as a part of its Series C round led by Sequoia Capital India. Existing investors, including Sequoia India, are expected to participate in the round, said the people mentioned above.Druva, a data-protection startup that counts US space agency NASA and drugmaker Pfizer among its customers, has received $147 million investment as it rapidly scales in response to accelerated demand for its platform. The fundraise was led by Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), a global investment group, The round has increased the Pune and California-based company’s valuation above $2 billion. The financing round also included participation from existing investors Viking Global Investors and Atreides Management.Virdee, an Austin, Texas-based SaaS company delivering digital check-in and virtual concierge services to the hospitality and commercial real estate industries, received a strategic financing from SaaS investors, bringing total seed funding to $4M. Backers included Silverton Partners, LiveOak Venture Partners, and DJR Advisors.As online identity management grows in importance, Mastercard swooped in and bought identity verification company Ekata for $850 million. Mastercard certainly sees the rapid digital transformation that is happening in online commerce, a move that was accelerated by COVID. It’s a transformation that once started isn’t likely to change back to the old ways of doing business, even when we get past the pandemic.Atlassian today announced that it has acquired Brisbane, Australia-based ThinkTilt, the company behind the popular Jira-centric no-code/low-code form builder ProForma. The two companies did not disclose the price of the acquisition. The acquisition is meant to help strengthen Jira Service Management, Atlassian’s version of Jira that focuses on IT service management (ITSM). 

Physical security and smart buildings software, Spintly raises Rs 4.6 crore in an extended seed round of funding led by Silicon Valley-based Riso Capital, along with SucSEED Indovation Fund from Hyderabad, Chicago-based Nikhan Investments and Keiretsu Forum angel network . Spintly provides SaaS-based physical security solutions which enable smartphone-based door access eliminating the need for key cards and elaborate wiring for access control. They will utilise these funds to boost sales, marketing and research activities in order to enhance their position.C2i, a genomics SaaS product to detect traces of cancer, raises $100M Series B. Using C2i’s technology, doctors can order a liquid biopsy, which is essentially a blood draw that looks for DNA. This round of funding will be used to accelerate clinical development and commercialization of the company’s C2-Intelligence Platform. Investors that participated in the round include NFX, Duquesne Family Office, Section 32 (Singapore), iGlobe Partners and Driehaus Capital.IBM is acquiring myInvenio, a business automation software provider that specializes in process mining as part of the hyperautomation trend. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition aligns with IBM CEO Arvind Krishna’s effort to pivot the business toward multi-cloud software that drives business automation. The efforts span process mining, RPA, document processing, workflow automation and more. Those various software components integrate with IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation, and run atop Red Hat OpenShift. The OpenShift software allows IBM’s automation packages to run on any public, private cloud or hybrid cloud.