29 August 2016 – University and Government Venturing Summer Catchup and more

Investments

One97 Communications, which has reportedly raised almost $1bn to date, most of which came after it formed mobile payment subsidiary Paytm in 2010. It’s now set to formally split from Paytm and has set up a separate entity for its e-commerce activities.

Snapdeal, which raised $500m in a round led by the Chinese firm last September. Snapdeal has just received $21m in funding from Luxembourg-registered Clouse SA.

Quanergy Systems, a developer of the LiDAR technology that will allow driverless vehicles to navigate obstacles in real time, raising $90m at a reported valuation of over $1bn.

Brainbees Solutions, the Indian operator of maternal, baby and childcare e-commerce platform FirstCry, is in talks to raise between $50m and $75m in a round that could involve share sales by existing investors, which include IDG Ventures India.

ClearCare, the developer of a care and business management platform for home healthcare providers, has raised $60m in a round led by Battery Ventures that will support the enhancement of its product and the securing of more strategic partnerships.

Victoria University has opened up the licensing to its research to local businesses for free.

Denali Therapeutics raised a $130m series B round.

Exits

Novan Therapeutics, which is developing a pipeline of nitrous oxide skincare products, has filed for an IPO.

Meitu, developer of a photo editing and sharing platform that has reportedly been installed on some 900 million devices, is preparing to float in Hong Kong.

International Finance Corporation’s portfolio company Indecomm, an India-based outsourcing company, was acquired by Capital Square Partners, a private equity firm in Singapore.

Funds

Recruitment firm Kelly Services’ Indian subsidiary has formed a corporate venturing fund that will invest in local startups in partnership with Japan-based peer and partner Temp Holdings.

Venture capital Earlybird is raising a healthtech fund it aims to eventually close at up to $135m.

Connecticut University in partnership with state-backed Connecticut Innovations (CI) and Webster Bank is setting up a $1.5m innovation fund.

Chicago University is among the limited partners in the $75m second fund recently launched by US-based venture capital firm Pear.

Prudential Retirement has decided to shut down its seed-stage focused investment arm, Gibraltar Ventures.

India state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation launching a $15m fund aimed at projects in the energy sector.

International Finance Corporation meanwhile put $15m in the inaugural fund being raised by Long Hill Capital Management.

Wisconsin managed to push its Badger Fund of Funds to $35m after it attracted $10m from private investors, double the amount that the state had mandated in order for it to put up the $25m that it committed last year. .

Zubr, Belarus’ first private equity firm, meanwhile attracted $50m in commitments with European Bank for Reconstruction and Development signing up as cornerstone investor.

People

David Ollila, founding director of Northern Michigan University’s tech transfer office decided to move on to join VC firm Skypoint Ventures as vice-president of innovation.

Susan Warburton has joined Business Growth Hub, a local initiative that helps businesses in Manchester grow (that’s Manchester in England, not one of the over 30 cities and towns called Manchester in the US).

Launch Tennessee, the public-private partnership focused on startups and fast-growing companies in the US state, has hired John Lanahan as director of capital formation.


“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

22 August 2016 – Autonomous and Smart Car Investments, $30bn Fund in China and more

Funds

China has just reportedly approved the establishment of a state-owned $30bn VC fund in Shenzhen.

ONGC to drill into startups with $15m fund

Uber and Digi to experiment with Malaysian ideation lab

Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC), a university venturing fund commercialises science and technology advances made at Cambridge University, has raised £75m ($90m).

Prudential Retirement, a business unit of New York-listed Prudential Financial, has closed its seed stage-focused corporate venturing group, Gibraltar Ventures, so the company can build a new innovation strategy around design, acquiring and partnering with startups.

People

Lambert, who is chair of our Shift conference in NYC on October 28 in partnership with the NVCA, became managing partner with Sand Hill Road-based private venture capital firm Westly Group.

Jerneja Loncar, who has been an entrepreneur-in-residence at car maker General Motors’ GM Entrepreneurs after nearly four years at GM Ventures until the start of 2014, has been planning her next step after successfully running one startup.

Jon Lauckner, chief technical officer at General Motors and president of GM Ventures, who will be attending the GCV-NVCA SHIFT: Accelerating Corporate and Venture Partnerships conference.

Exits

General Motors reportedly made advances to portfolio company Lyft in the past few weeks to propose an acquisition, an offer Lyft turned down in order to raise more funding.

Twitch has acquired Curse for an undisclosed amount, roughly a year after the gaming media and community platform received $30m in funding from Riot Games.

Japan-based Rakuten has acquired the assets of Bitnet, a US-based bitcoin wallet startup, for an undisclosed amount.

Tencent is reportedly set to exit contextualised services search app Vurb through a $110m stock and cash acquisition by Snapchat.

Investments

It’s been a big week for internet group Tencent, with news emerging of three sizeable deals in which it’s involved. The company has first of all led a $227m series C for game livestreaming platform Douyu TV – essentially a Chinese version of Twitch – as part of a deal that will involve Douyu’s sports offering being absorbed into its own Qie Live platform.

Tencent also co-led a $175m round for India-based Hike, which is developing an all-purpose messaging app not too dissimilar to Tencent’s own WeChat platform, which connects to a huge range of e-commerce services in its home country of China.

Tencent enters Keep in series C+ round

Film and TV studio STX Entertainment has received an undisclosed amount of funding from investors including Chinese corporates Tencent and PCCW at a reported valuation of $1.5bn.

Ford has been upping its corporate venturing activity of late, investing $182m in Pivotal Software at one end of the scale and in a $6.6m round for Civil Maps at the other, as it seeks to strengthen its software capabilities on the way to the planned launch of its first autonomous car in 2021.

Chinese technology group LeEco continues to make a name for itself, diversifying into ever more areas, and now it’s raised $50m from conglomerate Macrolink for its smart car unit.

Amazon launched its $100m Alexa Fund just over a year ago, and the unit has now made its largest investment yet, as part of a $35m round closed by smart thermostat developer Ecobee.

Corporate venturing units Novo Ventures, Roche Venture Fund and SR One have co-led an $86m series A round for Tioma Therapeutics, which is working on a cancer treatment that will target the CD47 immune checkpoint inhibitor, with venture firm RiverVest Venture Partners.

Nutirinia, a developer of digestible insulin for infants, has raised $30m in a series D round featuring WuXi PharmaTech, taking its overall funding to more than $46m.

US-based cybersecurity software provider ID Experts closed a $27.5m round featuring BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners, the corporate venture capital arm of health insurance provider Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.

Tekpea connects to EPM for funding

Colombia-based utility service provider Empresas Públicas de Medellín has invested an undisclosed amount in the IoT company through its FCP Innovation unit.


“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0