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Deals
Alibaba has provided another $2bn for Lazada, the Southeast Asian e-commerce marketplace it had already invested $2bn in as of June last year.
India-based Oyo Rooms may be the next online services provider to benefit from SoftBank’s largesse, having reportedly entered talks with the corporate, and two unnamed new investors, for a round that is set to be sized between $500m and $800m.
Elsewhere in Asia, hospital and clinic operator Columbia Asia has raised $210m in funding, including $140m from Mitsui, as it prepares to expand to a 45-strong network of healthcare centres by 2025.
European mobile bank operator, N26, has closed a $160m a series C co-led by Tencent and Allianz.
Oxford Nanopore, a spinout from University of Oxford that is developing a range of gene sequencing systems, has secured $140m in funding from investors including GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, Hostplus and China Construction Bank that will fund research and product development and the expansion of its manufacturing facilities.
China-based online wedding services provider Hunliji has secured $65m in a series C round that included Fosun’s corporate venture capital subsidiary, Fosun RZ Capital.
Funds
Eight Roads, the venture capital vehicle formed when Fidelity Investments merged its Fidelity Growth Partners Europe, Fidelity Growth Partners Asia and Moonray Investors units in 2015, has launched a $375m third fund.
Yahoo Japan and Sinar Mas have both been fairly active on the investment front, but are seeking to expand their activities by partnering venture firm East Ventures for a $150m early-stage fund that will target Southeast Asia.
No new funds on GUV this week, but on GGV, the Japanese government has announced it has earmarked around $1bn of public money to help fund research into space exploration by new companies.
Exits
Media and e-commerce firm Naspers announced on Thursday it intends to sell more than $10bn of shares in Tencent, the China-based internet group in which it invested $32m in 2011.
Salesforce has agreed to pay $6.5bn in cash and stock for publicly-listed software integration specialist Mulesoft, a sum that is more than double the latter’s market cap when it went public a year ago.
US-based data storage and collaboration platform Dropbox floated in a $756m initial public offering on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on Friday, alongside a $100m investment by enterprise software provider Salesforce.
Enterprise cloud security software provider Zscaler has netted $192m in an initial public offering that marks one of the most successful flotations of recent times.
Lundbeck has agreed to acquire Prexton Therapeutics, a central nervous system disorder drug developer spun out of Merck Serono, in a deal that could eventually hit $1.1bn once all milestone and development payments are taken into account.
DocuSign is joining the conveyor belt of unicorns aiming to harness the success of enterprise software providers in the public markets, reportedly filing confidentially for an IPO.
Meituan-Dianping, a China-based local services platform backed by corporates such as Xiami, Fosun and Tencent, has entered discussions about an initial public offering in Hong Kong as soon as this year.
On GUV, we had two acqusitions: Appulse Power, a Canada-based power conversion and management technology developer spun out from University of Toronto, was acquired by semiconductor producer Silanna Semiconductor for an undisclosed amount.
And Emcision, a UK-based surgical instrument developer spun out from Imperial College London, has been acquired by medical device manufacturer Boston Scientific for an undisclosed sum.
“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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