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.

Paddle, the Revenue Delivery Platform for B2B Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies appoints software industry veteran Jimmy Fitzgerald to the position of President and Chief Operating Officer. In his new role, Fitzgerald will help Paddle with its mission to supercharge the growth of fast-scaling software businesses everywhere. Fitzgerald was COO at SaaS price optimization startup SignalDemand (acquired by PROS) and held senior leadership positions at customer relationship management (CRM) pioneer Siebel Systems (later acquired by Oracle). Caller-identification application Truecaller announces a new solution for enterprises, which will allow businesses to verify their identity on the platform. With this feature, verified businesses will get a green caller ID and a verified business badge, and can also lock their brand name and profile photo. However, consumers will continue to see the number of spam markings as usual and they retain the right to mark verified numbers as spam or block them completely. E-commerce investor Upper90 raises $55M for equity investments. Upper90 is led by CEO Billy Libby, former head of quantitative education sales at Goldman Sachs, and Chairman Jason Finger co-founder of Seamless, and it was the first investor in both Thrasio and Clearbanc. The firm offers debt and equity funding, and it just closed a $195 million fund in December. Chili Piper, a sophisticated SaaS appointment scheduling platform for sales teams, raises a $33 million B round led by Tiger Global. Existing investors Base10 Partners and Gradient Ventures, Google’s AI-focused VC, also participated. This brings the company’s total financing to $54 million. The company will use the capital raised to accelerate product development. The previous $18 million A round was led by Base10 and Google’s Gradient Ventures nine months ago. Substack announces a $1M initiative to fund local journalists. The startup described Substack Local as a $1 million initiative that will fund independent writers creating local news publications. Similar to the Substack Pro program, the company will offer cash advances of up to $100,000, as well as mentorship and subsidized access to health insurance and design services. In exchange, Substack will take 85% of subscription revenue for a year.UserZoom raises $100M and acquires EnjoyHQ, to grow its platform to improve UX and other interactive design elements. It has built a platform used by companies like Google, Microsoft, PayPal, Salesforce, and many others to help them stay off the bad design radar with tools to evaluate their design and identify where and when it doesn’t work.MedChron LLC Launches Its Innovative New SaaS for Small to Mid Size Medical Practices, Optimizing CCM, CCP, and MWV Medicare Billing. MedChron was founded to fix problems and deliver an affordable web-based software solution that quickly, efficiently, and neatly organizes all contacts and interactions with patients. 

Mowies Expands On-Demand Platform with Harmonic's VOS Cloud Streaming SaaS. Mowies expanded offering allows consumers to purchase on-demand content directly from filmmakers, musicians and storytellers. The VOS360 SaaS provides Mowies with an easy-to-use, end-to-end solution for media processing and delivery, optimizing bandwidth usage and enabling an exceptional viewing experience for viewers.
London-based multi-store, mutli-vendor e-commerce solution for global scaling platform Techsembly raises £1 million from SuperSeed Ventures and a number of undisclosed private investors.The funding is expected to be used to assemble a cross-marketing team that will initially target European and Asian markets. 
Uber Offers SaaS To Three New Public Transit Agencies. Denver’s Regional Transportation District will begin employing Uber’s management software on its fleet of wheelchair-accessible vehicles this week, with Cecil Transit and Porterville Transit following in the weeks to come. These agencies will pay a fee to use Uber’s technology. Uber made its first transit deal in June of last year, offering residents of Marin County, population 250,000, a chance to use Uber’s app to book minibus rides. The deal allowed the county transit agency to charge riders $4 per mile, with a dollar discount for every mile for travelers with disabilities or mobility issues. Uber earns a flat fee for managing the service, capped at $80,000.
Aras Announces Expansion of Subscription Offerings with Enterprise SaaS. Enterprise Edition delivers full customization capabilities in an all-inclusive SaaS format with DevOps processes specifically designed to meet the mission-critical demands of the most complex scenarios. The new subscription offer from Aras provides unmatched cloud capabilities for the largest enterprise deployments.
 Aiven, a provider of open-source software for managing cloud data infrastructure, raises $100 million from investors led by venture capital fund Atomico and would use the proceeds to expand internationally. Helsinki-based Aiven stated that the Series C funding round valued the business at more than $800 million. It was also backed by new investors Salesforce Ventures and World Innovation Lab.

Huler Launches Its Human Experience SaaS Platform, The HulerHub. HulerHub transforms the way businesses engage with their teams by introducing a people-centric and time-saving digital solution. The much-anticipated flagship SaaS offering has already registered interest from global household names within the UK, USA and Canada, following an initial $7 million dollar investment.
Flipkart Group is close to buying travel and hotel booking platform Cleartrip in a distress sale, as the Walmart-owned e-commerce giant strengthens its operations in the hospitality segment.The cash-and-stock deal valuing Cleartrip at almost $40 million may close in the next 10 days. The deal comes at a time the hospitality industry continues to reel from the onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic.
Risk and compliance startup LogicGate confirms a data breach. An unauthorized third party has obtained credentials to its Amazon Web Services-hosted cloud storage servers storing customer backup files for its flagship platform Risk Cloud, which helps companies to identify and manage their risk and compliance with data protection and security standards. LogicGate has not stated how the AWS credentials were compromised. LogicGate has not made any public statement about the breach.
Clubhouse is rapidly expanding access to payments, its first revenue-generating feature for creators, since its launch into testing earlier this month. At the beginning of April, Clubhouse said it would give a small test group of creators the ability to accept payments from their fans and supporters through the social audio app. Clubhouse this weekend rolled out payments to 60,000-plus users in the U.S.and it expects to have payments roll out to everyone over the next few weeks.
1Password acquires SecretHub and launches new enterprise secrets management tool. 1Password has not disclosed the price of the acquisition. 1Password is currently in use by more then 80,000 businesses worldwide. In addition to the acquisition  1Password has also announced a new partnership with GitHub.
Deeplite raises $6M seed to deploy ML. Deeplite, a startup based in Montreal, wants to change the way ML is provided at very high price by providing a way to reduce the overall size of the model, allowing it to run on hardware with far fewer resources.The investment was led by Boston-based venture capital firm PJC led the round, with help from Innospark Ventures, Differential Ventures and Smart Global Holdings. Somel Investments, BDC Capital and Desjardins Capital also participated.. .

YOOBIC has raised $50M in Series C funding from Highland Capital to continue its growth, increase its headcount to 350 by 2020 by hiring across technology, sales and engineering, and enhance its R7D efforts to cement its position as a leader in the market.

Interos, a supply chain risk management SaaS provider, has turned unicorn raising $100M in Series C funding from NightDragon. It works towards mitigating supply chain disruptions, both cyber and physical.

AuthenticID has raised $100M in minority growth investment from Long Ridge Equity Partners to support the development of solutions for extended identity verification and fraud detection use cases.

Israel’s Tailor Brands, which provides a platform for automating brand design and marketing processes for small businesses, has raised $50 million in Series C funding led by GoDaddy, reports state.  

Galvanize, a software platform for SaaS governance, risk, and compliance (GRC), has announced a strategic partnership with Waymark Tech, a regulatory and legal intelligence supplier to financial services.  

TPG Capital will get $2.25 billion from Uber Freight for Transplace. Uber Freight’s company will grow due to this purchase as it seeks to carve out market share in existing regions and expand into Mexico. According to the company, Uber Freight’s brokerage would be kept independent from Transplace’s services.

Gravitee dot i o an open-source API management platform, has raised $11M in a Series A round, led by Oxx and AlbionVC, to expand its development, sales, and marketing teams. Tide, Auchan, and other firms use Gravitee dot i o’s main API administration tool.

CloudServer, a SaaS-based, cloud-hosted RPA service, has been introduced by OpenBots, an open-source RPA platform. The new CloudServer is cloud-based, making it a dependable, scalable, and secure option. Its usage-based approach saves clients money by charging per-minute use rather than per-bot or per number of machines or users.

Mailmodo, a no-code email marketing company, has raised $2 million in early funding to help with product development and market expansion. Mailmodo was one of the companies in the fifth batch of Sequoia Capital India’s Surge program. According to Mailmodo, using AMP emails shortens the user experience.

Growth equity firm PSG has acquires a majority stake in Nalanda Global, a Spanish provider of supplier risk management software solutions to companies across 10 countries. The deal marks the eighth investment from PSG's Europe-focused fund, which closed on €1.25 billion in February.
Datadog Completes Acquisition of Sqreen. The acquisition will accelerate the way they build security tools that automate application protection, threat detection, and security monitoring.The closing of this deal will boost Datadog's existing APM functionality and move the company closer to providing customers with a robust, full-stack security monitoring solution for the cloud age.
NVIDIA and Global Computer Makers Launch Industry-Standard Enterprise Server Platforms for AI. NVIDIA and VMware’s collaboration provides customers an AI-ready enterprise platform to accelerate AI, container-based and traditional enterprise workloads. Among the first incorporating these systems into their data centres are Lockheed Martin and Mass General Brigham.
Commvault announces that Metallic Backup-as-a-Service solutions are now available in the UAE and wider Middle East region. The solutions include Metallic’s enterprise-grade offerings including Metallic Office 365 Backup and Recovery, Metallic Endpoint Backup and Recovery and Metallic Core Backup and Recovery. With this expanded availability, the firm claims that customers can now seamlessly address growing business concerns around cost, scalability, and security as they protect critical data.
SaaS security startup DoControl raises $10 million in Series A funding to help customers safeguard SaaS applications from Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, and others. Key financial backers include RTP Global, CrowdStrike Falcon Fund, StageOne Ventures and Cardumen Capital. DoControl is the latest in a growing list of security startups focused specifically on safeguarding SaaS applications.

Tiger Global goes super aggressive with Investments in India. The Early backer of Flipkart and Ola, Tiger Global is close to concluding over two dozen deals in India this year alone. The New York-headquartered firm, has recently closed a $6.7 billion fund. They last week led investments in social network ShareChat, business messaging platform Gupshup, and investment app Groww, and participated in fintech app CRED’s round, helping all of these startups attain the much sought after unicorn status.
Microsoft Corp. is in advanced talks to buy artificial intelligence and speech technology company Nuance Communications Inc. The price being discussed could value Nuance at about $56 a share. This would give Nuance an equity value of about $16 billion.
Google has confirmed that it’s ending support for the Google Shopping apps on Android and iOS. The focus is now more on Google web shopping. It comes as Google has been expanding shopping functionality in Search, Image Search, and YouTube, while increasingly leveraging augmented reality. This change lets Google conserve engineering resources.
Clubhouse data has been leaked, days after scraped data from more than a billion Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, was put for sale online. The upstart platform seems to have experienced the same fate, with an SQL database containing 1.3 million scraped Clubhouse user records leaked for free on a popular hacker forum. Clubhouse has responded saying they have not experienced a breach of their systems and said that the data is already publicly available and that it can be accessed via their API which raises some questions about the privacy stance of the company allowing for anyone to gather even public profile information on a mass scale. 

Vi Business forays into integrated IoT, plans expansion of cloud services. The announcement from Vodafone Idea comes a day after Bharti Airtel announced the launch of Airtel IoT - an end-to-end platform with the capability to connect and manage billions of devices and applications. There are three specific fields Vi will be getting into. One IoT and integrated space. Second one is on collaboration which includes a host of SaaS and third will be cloud services. From being a traditional connectivity player, they will be connectivity plus collaboration plus IoT and integrated IoT and a cloud platform, said Kishore, chief enterprise business officer, Vi Business
Coupa Announces Strategic Partnership with Japan Cloud to Establish Coupa K.K. This joint venture will enable Coupa to scale to support the growing number of Japanese companies looking to gain greater efficiency and agility through Business Spend Management. Japan Cloud has a demonstrated track record of scaling U.S. enterprise software companies in the Japanese market, including Salesforce, Marketo, and most recently New Relic, BlackLine, WalkMe, nCino, and Braze.
IBM drives innovation with new Cloud for Financial Services. With the general availability of IBM Cloud for Financial Services, the financial services industry, including technology partners, can now build applications with Red Hat OpenShift, migrate virtual machine workloads, and establish compliance profiles across their workloads to help support their continuous compliance needs. Financial services institutions can now accelerate their cloud journeys with IBM Cloud for Financial Services' built-in security and compliance controls for both cloud-native and VMware workload.

Speciale Invest announces first close of second fund at ₹140 crore. Through the new fund raise, Speciale Invest expects to invest in about 18-20 startups in the space of enterprise software products, developers tools and frontier technologies
No-code publishing platform Shorthand raises $8M. Shorthand allows publishers and brands to create multimedia stories. The raise was led by Fortitude Investment Partners. The company also says that demand has only increased during the pandemic, with usage quadrupling in the fourth quarter of 2020 and subscription revenue up 8.8% month-over-month in February of this year.
Cleo Capital raises 20 million for its second fund. A recent SEC filing shows that Cleo Capital has already raised $6.7 million of that goal, bringing total assets under management to around $10 million. Like many firms, Cleo Capital has turned to creative measures to diversify deal flow in the era of Zoom investing and pandemic business. For example, Cleo Capital launched a fellowship program for laid-off workers during COVID-19 to promote entrepreneurship
FE International, Inc., the global market leader in mid-market technology mergers and acquisitions (M&A), announces the acquisition of Txt2Give, the first-of-its-kind mobile donation platform, by LTV SaaS Growth VII, LLC (LTV Fund).

A SaaS platform company in the Solar Power Industry, Prescinto, has raised $3.5M in seed funding. Prescinto is looking at revolutionizing the solar power industry by improving efficiency of solar plants using AI and Machine Learning driven platforms that will help Solar Plants identify their root issues for underperformance. The Funding round was led by Inflection Point Ventures along with Venture Catalysts, Mumbai Angels and Lets Venture. This infusion of finances will help realize Prescinto’s goals of improving Solar Power plants globally.

UK based Home Care SaaS company that uses Machine learning has raised £4.5 million pre-Series A funding. The funding round organized by West Hill Capital was 50% oversubscribed. The funds will be used to roll out Machine Learning enabled care solutions for those in independent living conditions to help in efficiency of care given.

As one of the most happening occurrences currently in the world, NFT marketplaces are exploding in popularity as collectors wade into the trading of nonfungible tokens on the blockchain. OpenSea, a startup in the field that was launched in 2017, has announced that it has bagged its latest funding round of $23M led by Andreessen Horowitz along with participation from other angels and firms including Naval Ravikant, Mark Cuban, Alexis Ohanian, Dylan Field and Linda Xie.

Slapdash, is seeking to increase performance in the workplace by aiming to carve out a new niche for itself among workplace software tools. Sources say that slapdash has raised $3.7 million in seed funding from investors that include S28 Capital, Quiet Capital, Quarry Ventures, UP2398 and Twenty Two Ventures. Angels participating in the round include co-founders at companies like Patreon, Docker and Zynga.

Kuda Technologies, has just announced that it has received $25M in Series A funds.
The round was led by Peter Theil’s, Valar Ventures, along with Target Global and other unnamed investors. Valar, a company that has invested in a number of fintech startups, is funding an African Startup for the first time. Kuda had raised a seed round of $10M led by Target Global just four months ago and is estimated to be the largest ever seed round raised by a startup out of Africa. Kuda’s CEO, Ogundeyi said in an interview that they plan to use the new funds to continue expanding its credit offerings, and add more integrations as well as move into other markets.

Fortify raises $20 M in Series B funding towards its composite manufacturing 3D Printing. Other companies in the field including Markforged, Desktop Metal and new-comer Mantel have all made big announcements recently. Now Fortify is making the round with a significant raise of a $20 million dollar Series B equity round. This round was led by Cota Capital with participation from Accel Partners, Neotribe Ventures and Prelude Ventures.

Founded in 2018, Fort Robotics today announced a $13 million raise. Led by Prime Movers Lab, the round also features Prologis Ventures, Quiet Capital, Lemnos Labs, Creative Ventures, Ahoy Capital, Compound, FundersClub and Mark Cuban.

Airtable has bagged its Series E funding to push it’s valuation to $5.77B. Airtable, with more than 200,000 organisational customers is a no-code relational database that has announced the close of $270 million in Series E funding. This funding round has doubled the valuation of the company from its last round in September 2020 when it raised $185 million in Series D funding. This latest funding amount means that Airtable has raised approximately $617 million since inception. This latest round was led by Greenoaks Capital, with participation from WndrCo, as well as existing investors Caffeinated Capital, CRV and Thrive. The company says it plans to use the funding to accelerate the development of its enterprise product and growing the team. 

Dubai-based company Grubtech has raised $3.4 million in pre-Series A funding for its software platform that helps ghost kitchens and delivery-only restaurants. The investors are yet to be confirmed, however, a large regional family and a US Based Venture capital firm along with Investors seem to be most likely to match. They are looking to use the new funding to expand across the MENA region as well as Europe and the Americas. They are also looking to use the funding to develop their product. Built specifically for cloud kitchen operations or restaurants that are multi-brand but operate from a single kitchen, the epidemic has forced many to adopt Grub-Tech, as the majority of sales moved from over the counter to delivery or pickup orders.

iCrowdNewswire powered by Google launched a fully reworked and revamped SaaS platform including industry leading vertical newswires for Legal, Real Estate, Research Marketing, Content Marketing, and general press release distribution. Since shaking hands with Google in 2017, icrowdnewswire has become the prominent press release distribution tech company focusing on paid advertising distribution from a Geographic perspective.  

Signiant Inc. today announced the acquisition of the German company Lesspain Software, the  provider of Kyno the desktop application and embedded media processing software.  Signiant looks forward to tapping into Lesspain’s talent and technology, which would be used to extend Signiant’s Software Defined Content Exchange SaaS Platform, commonly known as SDCX. The software connects more than 50,000 media and Entertainment companies across the globe in varying sizes.

The startup, UpCodes, which develops building-code compliance tools, has announced today that it has raised pre-series A funding, totaling $3.36 million dollars. The company has now raised $4.15 million as funding since its inception. Having started their journey in 2016, they took part in Y Combinator’s accelerator program in 2017. This new round was led by Point Nine Capital, a Berlin-based company that primarily invests in online marketplaces and SaaS products. Other investors include the co-founder Ryan Sutton-Fee, Ralph Gootee, Tracy Young, and Kenny Stone; Bragiel Brothers; Capital X; Flex Capital and liquid 2 Ventures. 

Indian based Tata Consultancy Services or also known as TCS has announced the launch of it’s SaaS-based automatic suite of security services for cognitive threat management, identity and access management, governance, risk and compliance, data privacy and protection, digital forensics, and incident response. Board-level executives, as well as C-suite’s, can get real-time insights to review and fine-tune their risk strategies.

Otarkie, a Zimbabwean startup has launched a SaaS platform focusing on retailers seeking omni-channel ways to sell online. Otarkie, aim’s to support potential customers and headless e-commerce to launch and manage their own retail operations across multiple sales channels with a singular back end office. Customers can pick and integrate modules based on their requirements as well, which helps them integrate and transition into the platform smoothly. Otarkie is looking to address a gap in the market where payment gateways and solutions are not catered to the local market, which is Southern Africa. The company looks to expand its operations into neighbouring Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zambia.

SaaS Alerts, a company that was started in 2020 has raised $1.2 million in early stage seed funding. The company’s CEO mentioned that they wanted to reach out and get investors from the MSP software and IT services industry that they have succeeded in. The investor line up includes Gary Pica a former owner, David Bellini the co-founder of ConnectOn, Adam Slutskin the CRO at Liongard, Paul Cissel former CEO of Internet & Telephone, Pete Peterson CEO of Merit Solutions, Kevin Lancaster Executive VP of Kaseya, Paul Brady CEO of Gtms, John Barrows CEO of JBarrows Sales training and Michael France, Managing Partner at Taylor Business Group. The funding arrives at a key time for SaaS Alerts and the MSP software industry as a whole. 

VERB Technology Company, Inc. today announced that CEO Rory Cutaia is presenting at the Emerging Growth Conference on Wednesday, March 17, to a live, online audience. VERB, a rapidly emerging market leader in business-focused interactive video sales and marketing tools, including livestream ecommerce, CRM, and content management applications makes software-as-a-service (SaaS) products that are cloud-based, accessible on all mobile and desktop devices, and are available by subscription for individual and enterprise users. Rory’s presentation will highlight the Company’s SaaS sales enablement solutions and its interactive video technology. 

Stripe is looking to use the funds to expand their European business and focus on their European HeadQuarters. It is looking to bolster its treasury network and global payments as well. The funding round was backed by the likes of Allianz X fund, Axa, both from the insurance world as well as Baillie Gifford, Fidelity, Sequoia and Investors from Ireland, namely Ireland's National Treasury Management Agency.
ESB, an Indonesian based company has just raised US$3 million in a series A funding. This funding round was led by Beenext, AC Ventures and Skystar Capital. ESB is looking to use part of its latest round of funding to onboard suppliers for their B2B supply chain. During the Lockdown of last year, ESB launched a delivery platform that helped companies offer contactless dining and deliver independently. They completely outmatched their competition by competitively pricing their offering. The platform became the buzz when it onboarded 20 Million annual orders for customers within just 6 months.

Credit Suisse reports that India has 100 startup unicorns and not just the often mentioned number of 30-35. The report states that over 60% of these companies were started after 2005. These unicorns cover various sectors however, SaaS companies though classified as non-conventional companies, are ranked as some of the fastest growing industries in the country. 

Indian Startups seems to have taken the lead in the most number of companies funded, with a total of 19 startups that have raised funding. Many of these are SaaS companies. 196 Million dollars was pushed to 16 of the 19 companies. Of these companies, Icertis raked in approximately $80 Million followed by Ecom Express at about $40 Million Dollars. Other companies that were funded include Quizizz, Riskcovry, Awfis and Nordwin to name but a few. The complete list of companies will be shared in our post on Linkedin. Of the 19 companies funded, 3 companies are yet to disclose the amounts.

Israeli company, Optibus picks up $107M for an AI-based planning and operations platform aimed at the mass transportation sector. Mass transportation is an essential part of how metropolitan areas are kept moving and connected. Optibus is a platform that helps to analyze how vehicles and people move in and around cities so as to provide scheduling, navigation and driver rostering towards mass transportation providers. The company has raised $107M as Series C funding and it looks to expand its solutions and services with the infusion of the funds. Though the valuation of the company has not been announced yet, it is estimated that Optibus is valued at nearly $500 Million dollars after this round of funding which boosts it by nearly 4 times its previous valuation and round from 2018. 

Valor Ventures Fund 2 has announced a $1.75 million Series Seed funding of Allelica, Inc. Valor General Partner Gary Peat joins the Allelica board of directors. The round, led by Valor Ventures also had Pi Campus, an AI-focused venture fund and Medical Genetics Center (MGZ), a prestigious genetics research institution, as strategic investors.

SailPoint Technologies has announced that it is going to acquire ERP Maestro, a SaaS Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) Solution. SailPoint is looking to use ERP Maestro’s flexible agile approach to automate and ensure robust monitoring for an organisations’ most complex business critical systems. With ERP Maestro, the company will unite identity security with ERP Maestro’s Separation-of-Duty controls monitoring for an organization’s most critical applications, like SAP.

Privacera has recently announced a successful funding round. They raised $50 million in a Series B funding round where Insight Partners led the funding round. In May of last year, the solution provider had already raised Series A funding round for $13.5 million. The latest investment was led by Insight Partners, Sapphire Ventures, Battery Ventures, and earlier investors.

According to Gartner’s forecasts, SaaS revenues are set to grow from $121 billion in 2021 to $141 billion in 2022. The SaaS economy has been steadily growing with more companies offering their products or services under the software-as-a-service model. The one issue that SaaS companies face is getting better qualified Leads in an uphill battle to ensure they can onboard as many clients as possible in the shortest time, thus keeping costs to a minimum. The latest trend shows organizations turning to AI to automate these processes that would usually take us a longer period to attend so that time to customer acquisition is reduced significantly. AI helps them not only speed up their process, but also helps filter and qualify leads so that the sales team works at a higher efficiency.

Yapily, an open-banking infrastructure provider, raised $51 million in a Series B investment to assist the company in expanding its commercial footprint across Europe. By focusing on approved APIs, Yapily can deliver a quicker and more reliable experience.

Vitally has announced the raise of $9M in Series A funding from Andreessen Horowitz to continue its mission of helping organizations implement personalized customer success and scale their customer success efforts.

Dozee raised around $6M in a Series A round to conduct research and development to develop new products and improve the platform’s capabilities. Dozee’s Remote Patient Monitoring system is gaining traction, with over 216 hospitals in India partnering with the company in the last six months.

i80 Group, an investment firm, has committed more than $1 billion in loans to more than 15 firms. I80 focuses on the financial and proptech industries. It conducts quarterly calls with venture capitalists, which is how it obtains the majority of its transaction flow for the time being.

Outplay has announced a $7.3 million Series A round to invest in technology and employ specialists from all around the world. The platform also provides assistance to guarantee that software adoption across client teams is completed in a matter of days.

Sonatus has raised $35 million in Series A funding led by Translink Capital to fuel growth and drive its mission of empowering automakers with cloud-based software solutions to transform vehicles into “data centers” on wheels.

Salesforce has completed the acquisition of Slack, eight months after it entered the definitive agreement to acquire the latter for $27.7B in a cash and stock deal. The acquisition would combine Slack with its Customer 360 tool, creating an operating system that allows companies to succeed in an all-digital world.

Microsoft has acquired cloud infrastructure management and security provider CloudKnox Security to provide unified privileged access to its customers. The CloudKnox software would work with Azure public cloud and align with Microsoft’s cloud security goals.

Spendesk, a provider of all-in-one Spend management SaaS platform, has raised €100M ($118M) in Series C to increase hiring, accelerate product innovation and introduce spend management automation and insights to every finance team in Europe.

SaaS startup Icertis raises $80 million in Series F funding; valuation triples to $2.8 billion. This year's funding was led by existing investor B Capital Group, with participation from Greycroft, Meritech Capital Partners, Premji Invest, PSP Growth, and e.ventures. The company will use this funding to invest in accelerating its AI and Blockchain development, expanding its sales and marketing footprint, and building out its global partner network. It also has plans to expand across Japan, South East Asia, and northern Europe. The funding round makes Icertis the second most valuable SaaS unicorn in the Indian startup circuit after Freshworks, which was valued at $3.5 billion in their last funding round in 2020.

Pipe Raises $50 Million Through Latest Investment Round Led By Raptor Group & Siemens Next47Pipe stated it gives SaaS companies access to the full annual value of their subscriptions, upfront. Since launching its SaaS financing platform in February 2020, Pipe claims it has seen overwhelming demand from early and growth-stage SaaS companies. Speaking about the platform, Harry Hurst, Co-Founder, and Co-CEO of Pipe stated: “When we were approached by such incredible companies with aligned missions to form partnerships, the conversations quickly evolved. We felt it made sense to have the broader ecosystem that powers growth-oriented companies join forces to invest together in the future of revenue as a tradable asset class.”

Legl gets $7M to help law firms upgrade to digital workflows. B2B SaaS startup Legl has bagged $7M in Series A funding led by Octopus Ventures for its platform for law firms which offers tools to streamline core business processes such as customer onboarding, due diligence, and payments. The UK startup was founded just over a year ago by Julia Salasky, a lawyer by background, who previously founded the public interest legal crowdsourcing campaign platform, CrowdJustice. Legl says it’s now working with around 100 UK-based law firms, including around a dozen of the top 200. Series A will be used to expand Legl’s team and grow its UK user base as well as for further development of the product.

Oracle, a leading integrated cloud applications and platform services provider, is looking to strengthen their presence in China and to do that, have decided to collaborate with iClick Interactive Asia Group limited. iClick is a Chinese independent online marketing and enterprise data solutions provider and a member of Oracle Partner Network. This collaboration will help Oracle to launch tailored SaaS offering that will empower brands to better serve and connect with consumers. 

Mainspring Services, a Title and escrow software company announced the release of their SaaS Platform, “titleLOOK”. This Platform streamlines your title production process. The first SaaS product by the company, titleLOOK addresses a major pain point for lenders, underwriters and consumers. The software will help users automatically publish preliminary documentation and reports which can then be shared with customers and stakeholders instantly. 

The Governance, Risk and Compliance giant, Diligent Corporation, that is used by nearly 19,000 clients, has announced that it will be acquiring Galvanize, a global leader in SaaS GRC software. Diligent Corporation has signed a contract towards this, however, the financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. This transaction follows Diligent’s planned acquisition of Steele Compliance Solutions Inc. a leader in ethics and compliance SaaS, which was signed earlier this year in February. Both these transactions are expected to come to a conclusion in March. With this acquisition, Diligent will become the largest SaaS GRC provider globally. 

ThinkIQ, a pioneer of digital manufacturing transformation SaaS, today announced an expansion in their suite. The new SaaS solutions by the manufacturing platform, features four new areas of data functionality, included with ThinkIQ's Visualize, Insight, Transform and Enterprise solutions. This will help manufacturers make sense of data surfacing actions that enhance safety, reliability and efficiency. The new platform components integrate with existing IoT infrastructure to help manage everything from supply chains to manufacturing processes and beyond. 

Networking giant Cisco is looking to invest $3 million to $5 million in Indian enterprise SaaS start-ups for a minority stake. The company has a portfolio of about 10 start-ups that it has already invested in directly or through investment partnerships with VC funds.Whatfix, Videonetics, Mobikwik, Mobstac and CloudCherry are some of the start-ups in its portfolio in India.

Tackle.io, a software company dedicated to helping software providers generate revenue through the Cloud Marketplaces, today announced it has raised $35 million in Series B funding, in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz and joined by existing investor Bessemer Venture Partners. This round of funding will be used to further Tackle’s platform innovation and mission to transform the experience of selling and buying enterprise software.

Vindicia, part of the Amdocs Media Division and a provider in business-to-consumer digital services monetisation, has extended its long-standing engagement with Vimeo.Vindicia provides Vimeo with a complete subscription management and retention solution to maximise customer lifetime value and business agility.

Sydney-based SaaS provider Alcami Interactive has been acquired by US-based Criteria, a SaaS people analytics platform vendor.
Alcami was founded by chief executive Jane Bianchini in 2014 and provides an on-demand video interviewing platform.

Security firm McAfee announced this morning that it will be selling its enterprise business to a consortium led by the private equity firm Symphony Technology Group for $4 billion.McAfee President and Chief Executive Officer Peter Leav says that his company has decided to direct the firm’s resources to the consumer side of the business. “This transaction will allow McAfee to singularly focus on our consumer business and to accelerate our strategy to be a leader in personal security for consumers,” he said in a statement.

The New York based company, Olo,  that provides a SaaS platform to restaurants for online ordering and delivery, has announced the terms for its IPO. Olo is looking to raise $306 million by offering 18 million shares at a price range of $16 to $18. Olo would have a fully diluted market value of $3.1 billion at the midpoint of the proposed range. By the end of last year, Chilli’s, Wingstop, Shake shack were all using Olo’s platform for their business’. Olo helps restaurants with an enterprise grade saas platform to manage their digital business’K2fly, a new type of global software company that delivers enterprise-wide technical assurance solutions for environment, social and governance (ESG) performance has announced that it has closed a 5-year resource inventory management software SaaS contract with Coeur Mining Inc. which will be rolled out to all five of its locations. Coeur is a precious metals mining company listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). 

Survey Sparrow, An Omni-channel Experience Management Platform, decided to go the extra mile as part of their women’s day recruitment initiative. They announced a joining bonus of 50,000 rupees (Just over 700 dollars) to women who have applied for jobs in product development, quality assurance and technical writing roles on or before March 15 and ready to join the company by April 15th. They are looking to fill up to 50 vacancies. CEO of Survey Sparrow said that as a company, they have tried to bridge the gender gap in the organisation and hope this initiative will help them reach a 50:50 ratio from the current 70:30 favouring men at the moment.

SaaS And Enterprise Software Veteran Lisa Schreiber joins BlackLine as chief customer officer. With over 20 years experience in SaaS and Enterprise Software, the company is looking towards Lisa to oversee it’s Implementation, Strategic Innovation, Customer Success, Support and Training teams as the accounting automation software leader continues to transform the way Finance and Accounting departments work.

Vendr has announced a $60 million Series A funding round. This funding round was led by Tiger Global, along with existing investors, Y Combinator, Sound Ventures, Craft Ventures, F-Prime Capital and Garage Capital. This comes after Vendr has successfully raised a Seed round of just over 6 Million Dollars by the middle of 2020. 

Over 6500 servers of the enterprise software VMware are currently exposed due to a security vulnerability. This vulnerability exposes servers and allows malware to be slipped into unpatched devices to take over companies’ entire networks. The situation has been classified as “Highly Critical” and was reported to VMware, who have released official patches and are urging all customers to update their systems as soon as possible.

Salesforce has been getting into a string of amazing investments over the last financial year.They have declared a whopping 2.17-Billion-dollar gain on Investments made. This is primarily due to investments in companies like snowflake and nCino. Snowflake had an amazing Q4 where their revenue rose by 117% raking in 190 Million dollars.

Tel Aviv based payroll and management cloud platform company, Papaya Global, raised its Series C funding round of over $100 Million last week. This brings their valuation to over $1Billion dollars. In total, Papaya has now raised $190 million from Series B and C since October last year. Papaya will use the new funding to meet the strong demand for its global workforce management platform, reinforce its market leadership, as well as invest in its product, engineering and go-to-market teams.

Austin Texas based company, Jungle Scout, raised $110m in growth funding led by Summit Partners and Jungle Scout Founder & CEO Greg Mercer. The company intends to use the funds to expand its technology suite by acquiring Seattle-based Downstream Impact, an Amazon advertising technology company founded by former Amazon employees Connor and Salim in 2017. This acquisition is aimed at extending Jungle Scout’s SaaS platform to support Walmart, and continue to scale its capabilities in advertising and full-scale ecommerce brand management.

Having moved over the last 5 years from a hardware company to a hardware-enabled SaaS platform, Airtame has a change in leadership. With Co-founder and CEO Jonas Gyalokay  moving on to become the chairman of the board, Current CFO, Martin Wagner will fill his boots and take over as CEO of the company. Martin said, and I quote “With a strategic mindset and sharp operational management, we’re now preparing to fulfill our growth potential in a post-COVID world, where schools will return and businesses will reopen. I look forward to leading the team as we prepare for an exciting year ahead”. 

The Irish-American financial services and SaaS company, known to help startups and enterprises alike to accept payments and manage their online business has struck a deal with Atlassian. Atlassian, known for its project management tool Jira and collaboration tools Trello and Confluence, help large numbers of companies to stay organised and focused. In a strategic effort to serve customers better, their CIO Archana Rao said in an announcement that, and I Quote, “We’re leaving all things payments to Stripe so our teams remain focused on strengthening our unique sales motion to bring products to markets for our customers,” 

By exploiting a set of flaws in Microsoft’s Exchange software to break into email accounts and read messages without authorization, A network of Chinese hackers are suspected of hacking thousands of emails. Small businesses, government offices and schools in the U.S. as well as state and local governments were affected as a result of the targeted hack. The flaws further allowed the hackers to install unauthorized software on systems.

In Mergers and Acquisitions, Canadian company, Wecommerce is acquiring Stamped, a Singapore-based startup known for software that lets online sellers implement loyalty programs and manage customer reviews, for 110 million Dollars. WeCommerce is a listed Canadian company worth over $700 million that owns several Shopify-related services and softwares. 

Co-founder of Optimizely Dan Siroker has a new startup and it transcribes what you say in your Zoom meeting. The startup is called Scribe, and though it is currently only available with Zoom, Dan and the team are looking to get it working with Google Meet and Microsoft teams and other meeting apps. Their goal, to get a “hive mind” set up for organisations, where ideas and thoughts that are voiced can be searched.

Soldo raised $180M in an oversubscribed Series C round led by Temasek. Soldo is a platform that allows employers to give their workers prepaid business cards that are linked to an automatic expense management system.

Vector Solutions has purchased the higher education sector of EVERFI for $100 million. Vector currently has 2,200 higher education clients, representing over half of all degree-granting schools and universities in the United States. Some of the world’s most well-known companies are among EVERFI’s clients.

Zenput, a company focused on operational execution, has raised $27M in a Series C round led by Golub Capital. Zenput has been utilized by Chipotle, Domino’s, P.F. Chang’s, Five Guys, Smart & Final, and 7-Eleven, among others. 

Zafin and Codat team up to help financial institutions with detailed cash flow data to assist them in offering more suitable products and pricing. The partnership would help them provide better personalized services to their clients and SMBs.

Pillar VC has announced the close of $192M for two of its funds – $169M for Pillar III, its third fund and $23M for Pillar Select. The venture capital firm would typically make pre-seed investments ranging between $50–500K and seed round investments worth $2M to $6M.

AppOmni, a provider of SaaS security management, has announced that it would provide its services to the ServiceNow platform to help its customers get better visibility into Sas security posture, help its IT and security teams to remediate risks and configure security better.

Wipro has announced the launch of its FullStride Cloud Services and commitment to invest $1B in cloud technologies, partnerships and acquisitions to create a comprehensive cloud transformation capability for its mutual clients, partners and customers.

Limeade, an employee engagement software provider, has announced the acquisition of Seattle-based TINYpulse, a SaaS employee listening provider, to create healthy employee experiences. Under the terms of the deal, likely to close by the end of July 2021, Limeade would merge with TINYpulse in an all-cash deal of $8.8 million for 100 percent of the issued capital of TINYpulse. In a press release, Henry Albrecht, founder and CEO of Limeade, stated that the Covid 19 pandemic had reinforced the company’s vision of creating healthy employee experiences, generating better business results for customers.

Go1, a platform helping companies upscale their workforce via on-demand training, has turned unicorn, raising $200 million in Series D at a valuation of $1B in a round co-led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, AirTree Ventures and Salesforce Ventures. Go1’s Series C funding round came last year where it netted $40 million from Madrona Venture Group. The total funding raised by Go1 crosses $283 million as per Crunchbase. Other and existing investors - Blue Cloud Ventures, Larsen Ventures, Scott Shleifer and John Curtius from Tiger Global, TEN13, Microsoft’s venture fund M12, Madrona Venture Group, SEEK, and Y Combinator participated in the funding round.

Kdan Mobile, a Taiwanese startup, has raised $16 million in a Series B funding round led by Dattoz Partners. Yeon Su Kim, CEO of Dattoz Partners, will be joining Kdan's board. Other participants in the round include Taiwania Capital, Golden Asia Fund Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, and WI Harper Group. Kdan Mobile specializes in cloud-based applications for workplace mobility. Kdan Mobile's enterprise products, such as Document AI, its data processing and filtering technology, and SaaS products like e-signature service DottedSign, PDF software Document 365, and Creativity 365 for multimedia content creation, including animations and video editing, will receive part of the funding.

Productiv, an enterprise SaaS management platform, has announced it is collaborating with Miro, an online whiteboard tool. This collaboration will enhance how people communicate inside the organization and maximize the usefulness of communication apps like Miro.The partnership will provide corporate teams more visibility into how they're using Miro for new collaborative practices, such as real-time feature utilization.

Dover, a recruiting platform, has raised $20 million in a Series A funding round led by Tiger Global Management. Other participants include Founders Fund, Abstract Ventures, and Y Combinator. Dover, which has created a "recruitment orchestration platform" geared at recruiters, lets them juggle and combine numerous applicant pools to automatically locate appropriate job prospects and then manage the outreach process, according to CEO and co-founder Max Kolysh.

Treblle, a real-time Application Program Interface (API) monitoring and analytics platform provider, has raised €1.2M ($1.4 million) in seed funding from Pan-European Venture Capital firm, Nauta Capital that predominantly invests in early-stage tech companies.

Zoom enters definitive agreement to acquire Five9 in an all-stock deal, approximately worth $14.7 billion. It would integrate the latter’s contact center-as-a-service solutions, into its communications platform to build better customer engagement in the future and accelerate long-term growth aspirations.

AllCloud acquires Integress for an undisclosed amount to help companies in their cloud transit journey.  With Integress accelerators that can expand, into AWS and Salesforce with data and analytics offerings, organizations would be able to accelerate their cloud journey.

Publicis Groupe has announced its acquisition of CitrusAd, a Sas retail media platform for optimizing brands’ marketing performances, for an
undisclosed amount. The acquisition would help it in three major areas of growth, customer understanding and consolidated measurement.

Kamereo, a purchasing platform and Tech-veggie supply for restaurants in Vietnam, has raised $4.6 million co-led by CPF Group, Quest
Ventures, and Genesia Ventures. The funds will be used to hire additional employees, create a new warehouse management system, update the user interface, and expand into Hanoi next year.

Razorpay, a fintech startup, has acquired TERA Finlabs, a Bengaluru-based sas startup, in an undisclosed deal. TERA Finlabs enables embedded finance solutions for organizations by providing technology, risk, and capital solutions. TERA Finlabs is a subsidiary of GAIN Credit, a digital lender located in the United Kingdom.

Accel Partners and Matrix Partners India led a $12 Million Series A financing round for Captain Fresh. The fresh funds will be used to continue investing more heavily in supply-side technologies, increase distribution globally, and invest in the company’s employees.

Teikametrics, a Sas platform for Amazon and Walmart sellers, has raised $ 40 million in Series B funding from Intel Capital, to drive the expansion of its AI-powered Sas platform, to support its mission of bringing, cutting-edge decision-making capabilities, to every online seller in the world.

Shopmonkey has raised $75 million in a Series C investment led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Index Ventures. The funds will continue to expand and grow, while also delivering top-notch service, to the auto repair industry with additional finances.

Workiva recently became the first SaaS company to gain entry to the UN Global Compact CFO Taskforce, as a part of which its CFO Jill Klindt, joined the task force. Workiva now aims to help companies in aligning their sustainability goals and commitments with credible corporate finance strategies.

NirogGyan, a SaaS company focusing on the healthcare industry, has raised an undisclosed amount in a seed funding round led by industry veterans. Participants in the round include Arindam Haldar, Teji HS, Sumit Bagaria, and others like BITS Pilani’s startup incubator PIEDS (Pilani Innovation & Entrepreneurship Development Society).

Google Assistant Investments Program and 100x Entrepreneurs have invested an unknown sum in Slang Labs. Slang Labs, which was formed in 2017, claims to be one of the first Google-funded companies in the global In-App Voice Assistant market.

NRG Systems, a developer and manufacturer of decision support tools, has announced the launch of NRG Cloud. To make data retrieval and storage operations easier, NRG Cloud offers a suite of data management services. NRG Systems has made the NRG Cloud Standard Connect Package accessible for free.

ServiceMax, a field service management SaaS provider, has recently announced its entry into a business combination agreement with Pathfinder Acquisition Corporation, a publicly-traded Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC). The close of this transaction would list ServiceMax on Nasdaq as a public company.

ServiceMax, a field service management software provider, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire LiquidFrameworks from a private equity investor Luminate Capital Partners. The financial terms of the transaction remain undisclosed. Luminate Capital Partners had acquired LiquidFrameworks in 2019. In a press release, ServiceMax announced that the deal would expand its field service management solutions, to address unique challenges in the energy sector. Additionally, the acquisition would better position ServiceMax to meet digital service execution demand in the industry and facilitate its expansion of portfolio and go-to-market strategies.

Netradyne, a startup using AI to build fleet safety solutions, has announced its Series C fundraise of $150 million from SoftBank Vision Fund 2.  with participation from existing investors Point72 Ventures and M12.

Amazon Web Services has announced the general availability of Amazon Health Lake, which is a cloud service that allows healthcare companies to centralize their medical data from various systems, and utilize it to improve patient care. According to AWS, utilizing HealthLake to consolidate different records into a single data repository makes information more accessible. This information includes medical information, such as clinician notes, lab reports, and insurance claims, stored in several databases.

LearnWorlds, a platform for creating and selling online courses, has announced that it has raised $32 million in a minority investment led by Insight Partners, global venture capital and private equity firm.

Google Cloud India has announced the launch of its new cloud region in Delhi-NCR. This would enable the firm to better their services to clients in various industries, particularly the public sector in India and the Asia-Pacific. The financial details have not been disclosed.

Daloopa, a company providing AI-powered document automation and data extraction, has announced its $20 million Series A funding in a round led by Credit Suisse Asset Management’s NEXT Investors. 

Lightyear, a software provider for network infrastructure procurement and management, has announced its Series A fundraise of $13.1 million from Ridge Ventures to boost hiring and resources in development, enhance go-to-market strategies, the company said in a press release. Lightyear had raised its seed round funding in 2020, netting $3.7 million from Amplo. With the close of Series A, the total funding raised by the company crossed 17 million $, as per Crunchbase.  

Singapore-based Easy Eat, a startup transforming restaurants into tech companies, has announced a raise of $5 million to expand into deeper Southeast Asia. The round involved participation from Aroa Ventures, family office of Ritesh Agarwal, founder and CEO of OYO; Reddy Futures Family Office; Prophetic Ventures; Maninder Gulati, global chief strategy officer of OYO; Cem Garih, managing Partner at Alarko Ventures, Fethi Sabancı Kamışlı, founder and managing partner of Esas Ventures and a few Silicon Valley-based VCs and angels, as per reports. 

SecurEnds, a cloud-based identity governance company, has announced a $21 million in Series A funding led by Elephant, one of the largest Series A investments in Atlanta’s cybersecurity and tech startup ecosystem, the company stated in a press release. 

Lantronix has announced the introduction of True Zero-Touch Automation updates for provisioning remotely deployed IoT devices. Lantronix Inc. is a global provider of secure turnkey solutions for the Internet of Things and Remote Environment Management , including SaaS, connectivity, engineering, and intelligent hardware.

Tinvio, a Singapore-based startup, has announced that it has raised $12 million in a Series A funding round led by AppWorks Ventures. The startup’s strategic investor MUFG Innovation Partners (MUIP), also participated in the round. Other participants include Tinvio’s existing investors, Sequoia Capital India’s Surge, Global Founders Capital, and Partech Ventures. 

Digantara, a spacetech startup, has raised $2.5 million as part of their seed funding round led by Kalaari Capital. Digantara plans to utilize the funds to expedite product development and launch its first satellite (technology demonstration mission) into low-Earth orbit, according to the official announcement.

MedPay, an API platform, has raised $1.2 million in a seed funding round led by Talent Investor Entrepreneur First and GrowX Ventures. The funds will be used to meet rising demand and enhance the company’s current product offerings.

Invite-only social audio app, Clubhouse, has launched its direct messaging feature- Backchannel- for all users, which allows them to slide into a one-on-one chat mode or a group text format.

Microsoft has unveiled Windows 365 that takes the OS to the cloud to offer a personalized PC experience for users and organizations, a new approach to cloud computing amid hybrid working.

Simpplr has raised a $32M Series C from Tola Capital. Simpplr will use the new funds to develop its platform, expand its development team, and scale up to serve worldwide commercial clients.

Crayhill Capital Management invests $300 million in Unybrands as growth capital. Unybrands is an eCommerce platform that helps Amazon fulfill and direct-to-consumer businesses scale.

Deskimo, a Y Combinator’s S21 batch startup providing on-demand access to work desks in professional workspaces, has launched in Singapore and Hong Kong after its inception in February this year, reports state.

Cybereason, an end-point detection and response platform has raised $275 million in a crossover Series F funding round led by Liberty Strategic Capital, with participation from Irving Investors, certain funds advised by Neuberger Berman Investment Advisers LLC and Softbank Vision Fund 2*, it said in a press release.

Bevy, an enterprise-grade virtual conference and community events platform, has acquired Eventtus, an engagement platform managing events for an undisclosed amount to offer a comprehensive end-to-end management solution and a seamless experience for event attendees.

Flymachine, an organizer of digital live events, has raised $21 million in a round co-led by  Greycroft Partners and SignalFire, with participation from Primary Venture Partners, Contour Venture Partners, Red Sea Ventures, and Silicon Valley Bank.

Untitled Ventures has announced its second fund of USD 118.3 million. It will collaborate with InnMind to deliver high-quality deep tech startup deal-flow to the fund’s pipeline.

Railsbank, a provider of APIs for fintech services, has raised $70 million in equity funding led by Anthos Capital. Other participants include Central Capital, Cohen and Company, and Chris Adelsbach’s new fund Outrun Ventures.

Cardless, a platform developer for companies launching credit cards, has raised $40 million in a Series B funding round led by Activant Capital. Other participants include Accomplice, Pear VC, and the owners and management of NBA teams Phoenix Suns and Boston Celtics. The funding increases the company’s total raised since its debut in 2019 to $50 million.

The Moot Group (TMG), an eCommerce technology startup, has raised €5 million (approx. USD 6.9 million) in a seed funding round led by Fuel Ventures. The new funds will be used for the company’s next growth stage. 

Great Question raises $2.5 million in a seed funding round. Great Question is an online platform that provides product managers, designers, researchers, and research operations with UX research services. Great Question was part of Y Combinator’s winter program of 2021.  

BHyve, a future of work platform, has raised $300,000 in a JITO Angel Network, LetsVenture, and other angel investors. BHyve is a platform for disseminating tacit employee knowledge and allowing peer learning networks in the future of work.

Mobile.dev, a startup providing pre-production workflows to help mobile teams automatically detect problems, has raised $3 million in seed round funding from Cowboy Ventures.

Acelerate, a software company helping restaurants operate efficiently, has announced the raise of $14.4 million in Series A funding led by Sequoia Capital. Taking the announcement to its LinkedIn handle, the company expressed delight at the investment after a year of bootstrapping.

Stytch has raised $30 million in Series A funding led by Thrive Capital with participation from Coatue and existing investors, Benchmark and Index, the company wrote in an official blog. 

Multiplier, a Professional Employment Organization (PEO) platform, raises a $4 million investment round. It provides complete solutions that enable businesses to hire individuals globally. 

Proper, a property accounting services provider for the real estate industry, has announced the raise of $9M in Series A from QED Investors, with participation from our partners at MetaProp, Expa, and Bling Capital. 

Odoo, an open-source all-in-one business software, has announced that it has raised $ 215 million from Summit Partners, a growth equity investor. Odoo is one of the most popular company management software systems globally, with over 7 million users. 

MoEngage, a provider of AI-leveraged and cloud-based customer engagement platform, has recently announced a fresh fundraise of $32.5 million in a Series C1 funding round led by Multiples Alternate Asset Management.

SimplyDelivery secured €10 million in a Series A funding round led by Cusp Capital (about USD 11.8 million). SimplyDelivery software reintroduces restaurateurs to direct contact with customers, and it identifies repeat clients. In the previous three years, SimplyDelivery’s annual revenues have tripled while remaining profitable.

 Logical Clocks secured €5M (approx. USD 5.9M in a Series A round sponsored by Industrifonden. The money will go toward expanding the company’s commercial activities and footprint, particularly in the United States. Hopsworks, the world’s first enterprise and open-source Feature Store with a full machine learning platform, was established and is operated by Logical Works.

Fortive Corporation, a technology provider for connected workflows, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire ServiceChannel, a leading SaaS-based multi-site facilities maintenance service provider. The deal, approximately worth $1.2 billion, would primarily be funded with available cash, Fortive said in a press release.

In a series of seed and Series A investment rounds, Endgame has raised a total of $17 million. Endgame is up against in-house developers who are splicing together various apps to create a solution that works for them. Endgame is currently in the early phases of development and is pre-revenue, but it already has a group of beta clients.

In a Series D financing led by Warburg Pincus, Quantexa raised $153 million. Quantexa plans to use the cash to enhance its product line and expedite its regional market growth plans. Quantexa works with blue-chip banks, insurers, and government agencies worldwide, including seven of the top ten banks in the United Kingdom and Australia.

Sourcegraph has raised $125M in Series D from a16z and others. The total funding raised by the company crosses $225M with this round and it aims to make its search engine easier to set up and add more features to help developers with the funding.

Eka Ventures, a UK-based venture capital firm, has completed its $95 million (£68 million) fund. Eka’s goal is to invest in consumer technology firms that promote sustainable consumption, consumer health, and the “inclusive economy.” Eka also has the backing of 24 entrepreneurs, 12 of whom were previously supported by Eka Ventures, either through a fund or directly.

Pantheon, a SaaS platform for WebOps developers, marketers and designers, attains the unicorn tag, raising $100 million in Series E funding from SoftBank Vision Fund 2 at a valuation of over $1 billion. This round takes the company’s total funding raised to over $200 million.

Motorola Solutions has announced its entry into a definitive acquisition agreement to acquire Openpath Security solutions, a mobile and cloud-based access control system provider for businesses. The financial details of the deal were undisclosed but Motorola expects the deal to close by the end of July 2021.

San Diego-based AttackIQ, a security optimization platform and a Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) system vendor, has raised $44 million in a Series C funding round led by Atlantic Bridge, taking its total funding raised to over $79 million.

Impact, a global management platform, has raised $105 million in a $1.5 billion funding round led by Qatar Investment Authority. The additional funds will be used to increase partnership automation, strengthen channel relationships, and expand Impact’s go-to-market operations. Leading companies such as Shopify, Uber, and Walmart use Impact’s marketplace.

Miami-based Marco Financial, a trade finance platform providing access to working capital for LATAM small and medium enterprises, has raised $82 million in a combination of seed and debt financing round, reports state.

Discord, an online voice, video and text service platform, is set to acquire Sentropy, an AI-powered tool preventing digital communities from harassment for an undisclosed amount. It is reported that Discord would integrate Sentropy’s products into its existing toolkit, also bringing the latter’s leadership aboard its platform. 

Arctic Wolf, a cybersecurity operations firm, has raised $150 million in a Series F funding round, valuing the firm at $4.3 billion. The additional funds will be utilized to keep the company on track and improve its mergers and acquisitions strategy. Arctic Wolf’s cloud security operations platform provides small and mid-sized enterprises with round-the-clock security monitoring.

Remote has raised $150M in a Series B funding round led by Accel at a valuation of over $1 billion. Other participants include Sequoia, Index Ventures, Two Sigma, General Catalyst, and Day One Ventures. Employees and contractors can use Remote’s worldwide payroll, benefits, and compliance services. With this round, Remote attains the unicorn status.

Amperity, an intelligent customer data platform (CDP) for consumer brands, has turned a unicorn, raising $100 million in Series D funding at a valuation of over $1 billion in a round led by HighSage Ventures. Other investors – Tiger Global Management, Declaration Partners, Madrona Venture Group and Madera Technology Partners – participated in the round. 

Bookee, a SaaS platform for the fitness industry, has announced the raise of its pre-seed funding (amount undisclosed) from Antler India. Pallav Nadhani, founder of Charts.com and FusionCharts, and Abhishek Rungta, founder and CEO of Indus Net Technologies, participated in the round, reports state.

ZoomInfo is set to acquire conversational intelligence provider Chorus.ai in a $575M all-cash deal. The move is aimed to allow customers to make excellent, data-driven decisions through their sales funnel by combining ZoomInfo’s top-of-the-funnel strength with insights, driven from customer conversations that Chorus captures.

The $57 million Fund III of the Female Founders Fund (FFF) has been completed. The new fund expands on FFF’s current investing approach in women, women of color, and LGBTQ+owned businesses. Climate change and education are two topics that have recently gotten a lot of attention.

Elevate Brands, a company that acquires and operates Amazon third-party business, has announced an additional fundraise of $250 million. The majority of the fund came from its existing investors and a global group of technology, fintech and e-commerce business leaders, the company said in a press release.

Vaayu, an automated platform to help retailers cut down their carbon emissions, has raised $1.57 million in its pre-seed funding round led by CapitalT. A number of angel investors, including Atomico’s Angel Program, Planet Positive LP, Saarbrücker 21, Expedite Ventures and NP-Hard Ventures- participated in the funding round, reports state.

Microsoft has announced a definitive agreement to acquire RiskIQ, a security company providing digital threat management solutions for software vendors. The deal is aimed to help customers build a comprehensive view of the global threats, better understand vulnerable internet-facing assets, and build world-class threat intelligence.

Gembah has raised $11M in a Series A funding round led by ATX Venture Partners. The total funding raised by the company now crosses $14M and it looks to use the proceeds from this funding towards expanding its engineering and marketing team, develop UX/UI.

HelloFlow, a fintech business, has raised € 1.3 million (about USD 1.5 million) in a seed round from PreSeed Ventures and Seedcamp. The cash will be utilized to strengthen the platform’s advanced capabilities and speed up product development. HelloFlow is a no-code platform that connects with local ID authentication providers to change client onboarding and identity verification in local markets and in banks.

Tide, a fintech firm, has raised $100 million in a $650 million Series C investment. The round’s leader was Apax Digital. Tide will use the extra funds to strengthen its business finance platform, expand internationally, and expand its market share. While Tide’s user base has gradually increased since its inception, in 2020, the number of users in the United Kingdom more than doubled.

Vara, a staff-management platform for Southeast Asian small and medium enterprises (SME), has announced the raise of $4.8 million in a seed round from Go Ventures, RTP Global, AlphaJWC, Sequoia Capital India’s Surge, FEBE Ventures and Taurus Ventures, reports state.

Robin AI has raised USD 2.42 million in a funding round led by Episode 1. The increased funds will be used to expand the firm’s client base. Robin AI will receive $2 million from the Google Black Founders Fund in addition to the funding round. Robin AI’s software solution combines machine learning and human intelligence to automate legal labor. Richard Robinson is a Black attorney-turned-entrepreneur who is passionate about promoting diversity in the workplace.

Dovetail studios, a full-service venture capital business, has raised AUD 10 million (USD 7.5 million) for a new fund. One of Dovetail’s goals is to train entrepreneurs to approach other VCs for funding. Dovetail is a full-service venture studio based in Sydney and Auckland that works with entrepreneurs who have a great idea but lack technical knowledge. Afterpay enlisted Dovetail’s help to build its digital infrastructure and create consumer-facing solutions.

Wobot.ai has announced the launch of a SaaS-based version of its product with a range of features to revolutionize how one perceives cameras and the information derived from them. Having announced its entry into the US market, the company would also look to solidify its position as a one-stop video analytics platform there.

Didomi has raised $40M in a Series B funding round co-led by Elephant and Breega, a round which takes its total funding to $46M. The company plans to invest in technology, expand into the US and European home markets using the funding.

Netskope has raised $300M in an additional round. The company’s total funding to date crossed $1B as per Crunchbase and valuation has increased to $7.5B post this round. It plans to use the fresh capital to expand its platform and go-to-market aspirations rapidly.

In a Series B financing led by Tiger Global Management, Flash has raised $22 million. It’s a platform that offers firms and employees in Brazil a variety of flexible perks. Flash is on a mission to modernize what it perceives as an old-fashioned manner of offering employee perks in South America’s largest country.

Frontier has received $2.8 million in a funding round led by NFX. Frontier calls itself a “vertically integrated” job market. Frontier’s concept is that it pre-screens candidates, selects the best, and allows them to schedule interviews with companies directly, saving time and money.

Smile Identity received a $7 million Series A investment from Costanoa Ventures and CRE Venture Capital. Smile Identity intends to utilize the extra funds to strengthen its services, expand into new locations, and serve a larger range of ID kinds. John Cowgill, a Costanoa partner, will join Smile Identity’s board of directors. Smile Identity provides ID solutions in Africa and throughout the world for banking, telecoms, financial services, and shared economy applications.

IBM plans to acquire BoxBoat Technologies, a well-known DevOps consulting firm and Kubernetes-certified enterprise service provider. BoxBoat will join IBM Global Business Services’ Hybrid Cloud Services business, which is constantly growing. BoxBoat provides a wide range of services, including customized Kubernetes and Enterprise Container Platform adoption strategies, application containerization, and DevSecOp training and facilitation.

Peter Boyce II, a General Catalyst partner, has left the company to form his own firm called Stellation Capital. He plans to raise $40M for his company’s fund. Mr. Boyce joined GC in 2013 and is in charge of Ro, Macro, towerIQ, and Atom investments.

Switzerland’s national postal service has acquired a major stake in the end-to-end cloud-based file synchronization and management software provider, Tresorit. It said that the move falls in line with its broader aspirations of supporting the Swiss economy in times of digital transformation.

Rootly, a startup helping companies recover and learn from incidents, has announced the raise of $3.2 million in seed round funding led by Ross Fubini at XYZ Venture Capital with participation from 8VC (investors in Asana, Palantir) and Y Combinator.

Toronto-based Clearco, a fintech capital provider, has raised $215 million in new funding round, just months after it turned unicorn, rebranding itself from Clearbanc, raising Canadian Dollars (CAD) $125 million ($100 million) in Series C at $2 billion valuation.

Nairobi-based MarketForce, a B2B end-to-end platform that helps customer brands deliver essential goods and services, has announced the raise of $2 million in a pre-Series A funding round.With this round, its total funding stands at $2.5 million. Investors who participated in this round were – Y-Combinator and P1 Ventures joined by V8 Capital, Future Africa, Greenhouse Capital, Launch Africa, Rebel Fund, Remapped Ventures, and a couple of strategic angels.

Botman, a cybersecurity software-as-a-service business, has received $200K from Modulor Capital and Pentathlon Venture in a seed round. The funds will be used to grow the company’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution for the digital advertising supply chain. The company wants to get rid of IVT (invalid traffic) from the digital ad ecosystem.

Avataar Ventures and Ascent Capital led a Series B investment of $16 million for CRMNEXT. Avataar Ventures and Ascent Capital lead a $16 million Series B investment for CRMNEXT. Across 100 major banking and insurance firms around the world currently use the startup’s services.

Outbrain, a recommendation platform connecting advertisers with open web consumers, has announced its raise of $200 million in a private equity round from The Baupost Group at an undisclosed valuation. The fundraising comes a week after it filed a proposal for the IPO of its common stock with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Lidya, a digital financial services platform, has raised $8.3 million in a pre-Series B funding round led by Alitheia Capital with participation from Bamboo Capital Partners, Accion Venture Lab and Flourish Ventures, reports state.

Localyze, a Y-Combinator-backed startup aiding cross-border employee relocation, has raised €10M ($12M) from Blossom Capital in Series A. Its previous round (Seed) was closed in 2020, and with this funding, Localyze plans to accelerate expanding into other markets besides its base, Germany.

Juni, an e-commerce platform, has announced the raise of $21.5M in a Series A funding round, co-led by DST Global and Felix Capital. The company had only launched in 2020 and raised its seed round funding around November last year. The proceeds from this funding would be used in product development and hiring across teams.

San Francisco’s mmhmm has announced the raise of $100 million in its Series B funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, exactly a year after its private beta launch. Since its launch in 2020, mmhmm has raised about $136 million in four funding rounds in less than a year, with the most recent Series A and debt financing round in October 2020, where it raised $35 million collectively, as per Crunchbase. Sequoia Capital, Mubadala Capital, Human Capital, World Innovation Lab (WiL), and many earlier investors participated in the round.

Dataminr has bought WatchKeeper, a situational awareness platform, for an unknown sum. With the purchase of WatchKeeper and its integration with Dataminr Pulse, Dataminr will grow its global corporate customer base. As part of an early access program, business customers will be able to utilize the integrated version of Dataminr Pulse later this year. The broader release is slated for early 2022.

ZeroFox, external threat intelligence and security firm, has bought Vigilante, a dark web threat intelligence firm. Vigilante will be incorporated into ZeroFox right away, giving customers a one-of-a-kind Dark Ops solution. Vigilante will provide clients with information and security resources, allowing them to make better decisions.

Hopin, a platform for event management, has announced the purchase of Attendify to strengthen and expand its event marketing capabilities. Hopin will soon provide Campaign Manager with Attendify, allowing event marketers to leverage a strong email engine. Attendify’s products, such as Audience CRM, a complete attendance data platform, will enhance Hopin’s portfolio in various ways.

Unit21, a no-code risk, fraud, and compliance software, received a $34 million Series B investment round led by Tiger Global Management. The money will be utilized to expand the engineering, R&D, and go-to-market teams within the firm. Unit21 was formed because the current method of fraud prevention and detection, which relied on “black box” machine learning, was flawed.

Opaque, a company that helps businesses analyze encrypted cloud data, has received $9.5 million in a seed round sponsored by Intel Capital. With Opaque, clients can work with secure data on the cloud while guaranteeing that the data isn’t exposed. Secure hardware enclaves and cryptographic fortification are part of Opaque, which is a mix of two essential technologies built on top of state-of-the-art cloud security.  

Repeat has secured $6 million in a Series A round of funding led by Battery Capital. The funds will be used to grow the company’s operations. Client purchasing patterns are tracked by the platform, which alerts them when it’s time to repurchase. It then builds a personalized shopping basket for each, which makes replenishing a breeze.

Cloverly has raised $2.1 million from TechSquare Ventures in a seed round. Customers may purchase carbon offsets from public markets to offset their carbon footprints while also utilizing technology to develop solutions. Cloverly monitors the offset market to ensure that the providers are trustworthy and continuously looking for new ones.

Fountain9, an AI-driven company that focuses on predictive inventory planning, has raised $1.9 million in a seed round. The money will be used to improve the intelligence of the startup’s demand sensing engine, increase its product offerings, and expand into new areas.

San Francisco’s r2C, a software security startup, has announced the raise of $27 million in a Series B funding led by Felicis Ventures with participation from existing investors Redpoint Ventures and Sequoia Capital. Alongside the funding, it announced on its official blog that its open-source product, Semgrep, would now integrate with GitLab.

Seattle’s WellSaid Labs has announced the raise of $10 million Series A funding led by FUSE, with participation from Voyager, Qualcomm Ventures LLC and GoodFriends. The company would use the fresh capital to enhance its AI-generated synthetic voice business.

San Francisco’s Renegade Partners has announced the close of its first fund, $100 million, to partner with companies going through a critical inflection point, which it cites as a supercritical stage, in their venture and help them become outliers. The VC firm made its announcement in a series of tweets.

Copenhagen-based Pleo, which offers smart payment cards for employees, attained unicorn status, raising $150 million in Series C funding at a $1.7 billion valuation from Bain Capital Ventures and Thrive Capital. Pleo said that this is the largest Series C investment raised by any Danish-headquartered company.

The US Department of Defense (DoD) has announced the cancellation of the ten-year JEDI contract with Microsoft. The move comes after US Federal Judge Patricia Campbell-Smith rejects the DoD and Microsoft’s motions to dismiss Amazon’s challenge of awarding the contract to Microsoft. Alongside the termination of JEDI, The Pentagon has announced a new JWCC contract, considering evolving cloud requirements

Magic Fund, a global collective of founders backing other founders, has raised $30 million in its second dedicated fund, Magic Fund II, to continue its mission of supporting early-stage startups across Africa, Europe, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.In an official announcement, Magic Fund stated that it would be writing checks between $100K and $300K in early-stage companies across different sectors and geographies and enunciated its aspirations and vision behind supporting them. 

Tata Consultancy Services has released Jile 5.0, a SaaS-based solution. Jile 5.0 is available in two versions. The Standard edition and the Enterprise edition. Jile 5.0 gives organizations a unified picture of their portfolios and programs, allowing them to align execution with strategy better. This will help business stakeholders, and teams collaborate more effectively and reduce the time it takes to launch new software.

TravelPerk, a business trip booking website, has purchased the UK-based Click Travel. Click Travel oversees £300 million in business travel for its clients, which will help TravelPerk expand in the future. With the addition of Click Travel’s 2,000+ SME clients, TravelPerk’s UK and European business has been reinforced, increasing the total number of customers to little more than 5,000 after the acquisition.

Hubble, an online marketplace for flexible office space, has announced that it has raised €2.7 million (approx. USD 2.7 million) in a funding round led by Pi Labs. Other participants include JLL Spark and Starwood Capital.The new funds will help in launching Hubble’s new suite of solutions geared at facilitating hybrid working. 

Toqio, a provider of SaaS global financial platform, has announced its raise of €8 million ($9.4 million) seed round funding led by Seaya Ventures and Speedinvest, with participation from SIX FinTech Ventures. The company would use the proceeds to scale its platform. Taking the announcement to its official LinkedIn and Twitter Handle, Toqio thanked the investors and enunciated its vision.

Vienna’s byrd, a global e-commerce fulfillment network providing online shops logistics solutions on Monday, announced the close of its Series B fundraise of €16 million, roughly $19M from Mouro Capital. The company had raised €5 million ($5.9 million) in Series A funding in July last year and with the close of Series B, its total amount raised has crossed €26 million ($30.7 million). Existing investors – Speedinvest, Verve Ventures, Rider Global and VentureFriends- participated in the funding round, the company said in a press release.

Speciale Invest, a deep-tech venture capital firm, invested $375K in Neverinstall’s seed round. To improve the platform, the money will be utilized to hire a world-class technical staff. Neverinstall is a startup developing a cloud platform for bringing any graphical user interface (GUI) program to the browser, independent of OS or device type. The startup intends to give free and open access to software programs without any fees or limitations imposed by the hardware of the user’s device.

CanBank Venture Capital Fund Ltd has invested an undisclosed sum in CoRover, a conversational AI startup. CoRover plans to use the funds to grow its business and invest in research and development to improve its AI-based platform. People from all around the world utilize CoRover. It claims to have the largest user base in India.

VC Holdings has signed a sale and purchase agreement to acquire some of IDreamSky’s SaaS-related software and the entire issued share-capital of Dream Impression Holdings, IDreamSky’s indirectly owned subsidiary, in an $11.23 million deal (HK $87.32 million).

Obviously AI, a no-code platform helping people without a technical platform build and run AI models, has announced an extension of its $3.6 million seed round that it raised in May this year. With the close of this extension round, led by a deep tech investment firm, University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners (UTEC), the company’s seed funding raised to $4.7 million.

ExpenseOut, Infiniti Software Solutions’ flagship product, has been reintroduced by the company, which provides travel technology service. The product scans invoices automatically and assesses them for accuracy, policy compliance, and legitimacy using artificial intelligence. The program offers options for accurately collecting and reimbursing mileage data using GPS.

Antler India has provided early-stage funding to PeakPerformer, a leadership development company. As it builds its AI platform and expands its client base, the funds will be used to hire engineering expertise. PeakPerformer is a tech-enabled executive development platform that helps companies upskill their executives at all levels.

TWID, a rewards-based payment network, has raised $2.5 million in a round led by BEENXT and the Surge Fund of Sequoia Capital India. The firm, which is located in Singapore and India, links clients with merchants to pay using points earned through a “Point Issuer” scheme. Surge’s fifth batch of 23 companies includes TWID, which has developed unique digital solutions to assist businesses and individuals.

In a pre-Series A financing led by IIFL Securities Capital Enhancer Fund, Leegality, a platform for document execution, received an undisclosed sum. The additional funds will be used to recruit more individuals in critical roles, speed up product development, and expand the company’s operations. Leegality’s e-sign, e-stamp, and document processing technology, launched in 2016, enables Indian businesses to sign and manage documents.

MyMobiForce, an AI-powered crowdsourcing platform, has raised ₹10 crores ($1.42 million) in a pre-Series A funding round led by Bharat Inclusion Seed Fund, reports state. The round witnessed participation from angel investors led by Manu Iyer of Bluehill Capital, Acsys Investments, and Ashutosh Agrawal (ex- Urban Company).

Du and Wipro have announced the launch of their multi-cloud platform that aims to simplify, accelerate digital transformation and cloud adoption across the UAE. It is set to help organizations reimagine their infrastructure, create new cost inefficiencies and deliver more secure solutions.

Huawei and Temenos have teamed up to allow Temeonos’ cloud-native core banking solution on Huawei’s public cloud. It would focus on the APAC region, with a focus on China and other areas. With the move, banks would be able to achieve their go-to-market strategy and open up new business models.

REvil, a cybercriminal group, used flaws in Kaseya’s update system to target hundreds of businesses in a devastating ransomware attack. The ransom demand is the highest in recent memory, and if paid, it will be the most expensive ransom ever paid in response to a cyberattack. The attackers hit MSPs’ Kaseya infrastructure, then the MSPs inadvertently distributed malware to their clients by seeding their ransomware using Kaseya’s trusted distribution method.

Intervue, an Indian SaaS hiring platform, has completed a seed round led by Titan Capital for an undisclosed amount. The funds will be used to grow the product and strengthen the core staff. Intervue combines live coding and video conferencing with other tools like whiteboarding, take-home projects, a question bank, and more to enable a company to hire better employees faster.

Cairo-based MaxAB, a B2B e-commerce platform connecting food and grocery retailers to suppliers, has raised $40M in Series A funding from North Africa’s investor RMBV. The company would look to expand its market other regions, especially the MENA, and scale its recently launched business verticals

Locad, an eCommerce logistics business, has raised $4.9 million in a seed round led by Sequoia Capital India’s Surge program. The funds will be used to develop the startup’s courier and distribution networks. Locad is a company that offers an “end-to-end solution” to cross-border e-commerce businesses.