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Deals
In the corporate venturing world, the biggest deal happened in China, where sports media company LeSports closed a massive $1.2bn round backed by HNA Group.
Another seemingly big round was closed by online grocer Yiguo, which didn’t reveal an amount but boasted that it’s larger than its competitor Womai’s $220m series C round in October last year.
Robo-advisor Betterment meanwhile attracted $100m in series E funding, more than doubling its total capital to $205m.
Juicero, an organic juice company backed by conglomerate Alphabet and food producer Campbell’s Soup, has boosted its total funding to $100m after attracting $70m for its series B round.
Finland-based document management company M-Files meanwhile raised $36m in its series B, which was backed by government-owned investment firm Finnish Industry Investment.
Exits
IDG Ventures India was less interested in investing and is instead considering selling its remaining stake in e-commerce Flipkart. IDG Ventures never actually invested in Flipkart, but gained shares when Flipkart bought its portfolio company Myntra, a fashion e-commerce business, for some $300m in 2014.
Funds
Infuse Ventures is seeking $150m for a new fund dubbed Bharat. Infuse’s backers include oil company BO, oleochemicals manufacturer Godrej Industries and World Bank subsidiary International Finance Corporation.
Germany announced two new funds totalling more than $810m. The two funds have been launched by Germany’s federal ministry for economic affairs and energy, the European Investment Fund and development bank KfW. The cash is split across a $252m Coparion Fund and a $560m ERP/EIF Growth Facility.
Japan has announced its intention to invest more than $1bn through four university venture funds. Tokyo University is set to receive the largest chunk with $450m and plans to use most of the money for a fund of funds.
People
IBM has announced that George Ugras will replace Claudia Fan Munce as managing director of IBM Ventures.
Mike Majors is leaving Siemens Venture Capital, where he co-founded a $100m Industry of the Future Fund, to become managing partner at venture firm Data Point Capital.
Martin Knight stepping down from his position as executive chairman of Imperial Innovations.
“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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