FUNDING | Pixr8 News

4Dec By PriyankaNo Comments

FUNDING

Step Raises $50 Million in Series B Funding from Stripe, Justin Timberlake & others

SAN FRANCISCO, 4th December 2020-- Step, a financial services company built for teens and families raises a $50 million Series B round of funding. The round was led by Coatue, with participation from returning investors Stripe, Crosslink Capital, Collaborative Fund, and Will Smith’s Dreamers VC. Step also added several new investors including Charli D’Amelio, Justin Timberlake, The Chainsmokers, Eli Manning, Kelvin Beachum, Larry Fitzgerald, and Andre Iguodala alongside prominent fintech executives from the likes of Facebook, Square, Venmo, Visa, and others. To date, Step has raised more than $75 million from investors. “Since Step’s launch, we’ve seen massive demand for this new type of all-in-one banking solution, making it much easier for teens to learn about money manage...

AI-powered Home Maintenance Platform Dobby Secures $1.7 Million in Seed Round

3Dec By AdityaNo Comments

FUNDING

AI-powered Home Maintenance Platform Dobby Secures $1.7 Million in Seed Round

WASHINGTON, Dec. 3, 2020-- Dobby, an AI-powered home maintenance platform raises $1.7 million in the seed round of funding. The capital will use to strengthen the company's growth initiatives, and spotlight its proprietary, automated, AI-first experience to homeowners, service providers, and ancillary beneficiaries such as real estate agents. This equity finance raise comes as Dobby scales to meet strong demand in the home maintenance sector, which, according to a Bank of America spending report, is seeing home maintenance consumer spending 60% above the Jan-2020 level. "During my days at DataRobot, I saw an opportunity to build an AI-first company from the ground up in a large and unsexy industry," said Satadru Sangupta, Dobby's CEO and co-founder. "I chose home maintenance beca...

PhonePe Raises $700 million at $5.5 billion valuation

3Dec By PriyankaNo Comments

FUNDING

PhonePe Raises $700 million at $5.5 billion valuation

Bengaluru, 3rd Dec. 2020-- Walmart owned eCommerce platform Flipkart separated its payment unit PhonePe, as the digital payment firm raises $700 million in funding valued at USD 5.5 billion. The financing round was led by Walmart including existing Flipkart investors, a statement said. Flipkart will remain PhonePe's majority shareholder, and the two businesses will retain their close collaboration, it added. "Recognising the momentum that has been achieved, as well as PhonePe's significant growth potential, Flipkart's Board determined that this was the right time to partially spin-off PhonePe so it can access dedicated capital to fund its long-term ambitions over the next three to four years," the statement said. PhonePe has crossed the 250 million registered user milestone, wi...

Y Combinator backed Digital Payment Firm Cashfree raises $35 million

25Nov By PriyankaNo Comments

FUNDING

Y Combinator backed Digital Payment Firm Cashfree raises $35 million

Bengaluru-based fintech, Cashfree raises USD 35.3 million (approximately ₹ 260 crore) as part of its Series B round. The investment was led by Uk based Apis Growth Fund II, with participation from existing investor Y Combinator. Cashfree, a payments and banking technology company that enables businesses in India to collect payments online and make payouts, was founded by Akash Sinha and Reeju Datta in 2015. The company is a 2017 alumnus of Y Combinator, the start-up incubator based in San Francisco, and has grown exponentially, processing over $ 12 billion annualised payment volumes as of March 2020, the statement said. Cashfree said it has been profitable since its first year of operations and counts more than 50,000 businesses amongst its merchants including internet companie...

CARS24 raises USD 200 Million, Becomes Unicorn

25Nov By AdityaNo Comments

FUNDING

CARS24 raises USD 200 Million, Becomes Unicorn

New Delhi, Nov 25th, 2020: Online used car marketplace CARS24 raises USD 200 million (around Rs 1,480 crore) in its latest funding round, led by DST global. Other existing investors including Exor Seeds, Moore Strategic Ventures, and Unbound also participated in this round. The latest round of funding raises Cars24 valuation at over USD 1 billion. The funding will be used to invest aggressively in technology and product innovation and scale new business verticals, it added. The company has raised a total funding of USD 400 million till date from investors including Sequoia India and Kingsway Capital. Last year, it had also raised funds from cricketer M S Dhoni. With annual transactions exceeding 2,00,000 units and a 4X increase in website engagement, the company has already ...

Duolingo Raises $35 Million, Now valued at over $2 billion

19Nov By AdityaNo Comments

FUNDING

Duolingo Raises $35 Million, Now valued at over $2 billion

Pittsburgh based online language learning platform Duolingo raises $35 million in funding from Durable Capital and General Atlantic, a global growth equity firm at a $2.4 billion valuation. The latest round of funding brings the company’s total funding to $183m. Duolingo will use this new funding to accelerate its research and development as well as to accelerate the growth and expansion of its team. Launched in 2011, Duolingo provides a language-learning platform and it offers 98 courses across 40 languages. In March, they launched a new app for children called "Duolingo ABC". The company’s app has been downloaded more than 500 million times. While learning content on Duolingo is free, the company has grown its revenue with advertising and a paid subscription offering, Duo...

17Nov By AdityaNo Comments

FUNDING

ActivTrak Raises $50 Million in Funding Led by Sapphire Ventures

AUSTIN, Texas, 17th Nov. 2020-- ActivTrak, a workforce analytics and productivity management software raises $50 million in Series B funding. The funding will use to scale go-to-market activities in sales, marketing, and channels, and expand platform capabilities using AI-driven analytics to help companies better understand and optimize how digital work gets done. With this round, ActivTrak’s raises total $77.5 million in funding. “The move toward remote work has triggered companies to rethink how they measure and analyze employee productivity in today's digital workplace,” said Nino Marakovic, CEO and Managing Director at Sapphire Ventures, who will join ActivTrak’s board of directors. “We're excited to welcome ActivTrak to our portfolio, and to partner with CEO Rita Selvaggi an...

MindTickle raises $100 mn by Softbank Vision Fund 2

16Nov By PriyankaNo Comments

FUNDING

MindTickle raises $100 mn by Softbank Vision Fund 2

Sales readiness platform MindTickle raises $100 million (approximately Rs 745 crore) in a combination of equity and debt financing led by Softbank Vision Fund 2. The existing investors, Norwest Venture Partners, Canaan, NewView Capital, and Qualcomm Ventures, also participated in the round. MindTickle provides data-driven solutions for sales readiness and enablement that fuels revenue growth and brand value for hundreds of companies across the world. MindTickle has offices in Pune, San Francisco, and London. The company will use this new round of funding to accelerate platform activities and expansion of global operations. "As customers become increasingly demanding and remote work becomes more common, organizations realize the need to reskill and upskill their employees on an...

13Nov By AdityaNo Comments

FUNDING

Truebill raises $17 Million in Series C Funding

New York, 13th Nov. 2020: US-based fintech startup Truebill raises $17 million in Series C round funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors Eldridge, Cota Capital, Firebolt Ventures, and Day One Ventures. Truebill improves the financial health of millions of people and helps them to track and manage their subscriptions and bills. The current round of funding in Truebill brings the total raised amount to $40 million. The team will use a new round of funding in product development to let people save more in the finance part. It’s no secret that 2020 brought many challenges, 90 percent of Americans stressed about finances and Truebill helps over a million people to save over $100 million.

11Nov By AdityaNo Comments

FUNDING

Roots Automation Raises $3.2M Seed Funding Round

NEW YORK, Nov. 11, 2020-- Roots Automation, the NYC-based Digital Coworkers as a Service company, has raised a $3.2M seed round led by Vestigo Ventures. Launched by Chaz Perera and John Cottongim, Roots Automation aims to empower companies to free their 'roots' their people to focus on meaningful and impactful work. "Vestigo Ventures has been incredible throughout our seed funding journey and we're extremely thankful for their support," said Co-Founder and CEO, Chaz Perera. "The partnership between Vestigo Ventures and Roots Automation is the ideal combination of enterprise technology and startup expertise together, we'll continue to fuel growth opportunities instead of mundane tasks for our customers." Vestigo Ventures is an early-stage startup venture capital fund specifically for ...

VPN Platform Tailscale Raises $12M Led by Accel

10Nov By PriyankaNo Comments

FUNDING

VPN Platform Tailscale Raises $12M Led by Accel

TORONTO, 10th Nov 2020-- Corporate VPN platform Tailscale raises $12 million in Series A funding from Accel, with participation from Heavybit and Uncork Capital. Tailscale is a new kind of corporate VPN that helps remote teams and organizations securely access the services they need. Leveraging zero-trust architecture from BeyondCorp at Google and the WireGuard protocol, Tailscale makes network security accessible to teams of any scale. The company launched in April with a Seed round and has since served tens of thousands of customers a month. “A large fraction of the workforce is remote for the first time, forcing teams of every size to rethink security,” said Avery Pennarun, co-founder and CEO of Tailscale. “We offer an easy and fast way to leverage secure private networks w...

10Nov By AdityaNo Comments

FUNDING

Escooter platform TIER raises $250 mln in funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2

Berlin, 10th Nov 2020: TIER, a Europe-based eScooter platform raises $250 million in Series C funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. Existing investors including Mubadala Investment Company’s financial investment arm, Mubadala Capital, Northzone, Goodwater Capital, White Star Capital, Novator and RTP Global also participated in the round. Since its 2018 launch, TIER has established itself as the European market leader through unrivalled capital efficiency and operational excellence as it deployed 60.000 e-scooters across 80 cities in ten countries. The Berlin-based company is already profitable and will use the investment to accelerate the company’s vision to Change Mobility for Good. TIER is revolutionising urban transport with innovative new technologies and micro-mobility solutions ...