Daily funding roundup - September 2, 2015

Tanium landed $120M; NewsCred bagged $42M; Universal Avenue secured $5M

• ConnectedYard, an innovator in smart technology and the Internet of Things (IoT), today announced that it has closed a $2.2-million seed round of funding led by Playground Global. The round was also joined by ConnectedYard's pre-seed investor, Tandem Capital. pHin, the company's first product, is reinventing pool and hot tub care by combining a Bluetooth® Smart and WiFi-enabled sensor, a mobile phone app and pre-measured chemicals into a subscription-based solution to take the guesswork out of maintaining chemical balance and water quality.
  
  
• Snapcart is an app that bills itself as the first in Indonesia to allow shoppers to get cash back when they submit photos of their receipts. Snapcart users can also grab rewards through other in-app activities like filling out consumer surveys and taking selfies with specific products. Snapcart received its seed funding from Ardent Capital, the amount was undisclosed.  
  
  
• NextLesson, a K-12 developer of personally relevant curriculum, today announced a $2.9 million convertible note seed financing from leading Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. NextLesson will use these funds to accelerate school district sales nationwide, expand its interactive platform and grow curriculum coverage. Since 2013, NextLesson has focused on engaging students by combining personal relevance, rigor and real world context -- engaging over 2 million students and 50,000 teachers in school districts across the country.
  
  
• With over one million users connecting to 500,000 hotspots, Instabridge, the Stockholm-based WiFi sharing community has grown considerably over the last twelve months. After raising a $1 million seed round from Creandum in October of last year, they've now raised a $3 million Series A led by Balderton and MOOR to capitalise on their growth, with a focus on emerging markets such as India, Brazil and Mexico.
  
  
• Cross-device data company Crosswise wants to broaden its horizons. The Tel Aviv-based startup, which announced $3 million in Series A funding, will use most of it on sales, marketing and breaking into new markets beyond the US and UK, with China and Western Europe at the top of its list. The round, which brings Crosswise’s total funding to $5 million, was led by Nielsen-backed private equity fund Pereg Ventures, with participation from ZhenFund, Emerge, Giza Venture Capital, OurCrowd and Horizons Ventures. Crosswise raised $2 million in seed funding in January 2014.
  
  
• Area360 announced a $3.5 million Series A round led by Madrona Venture Group. The company develops mobile location technology that airports, museums, and more can use to help improve the visitor experience with contextual content delivered at the right time, in the right place, to a smartphone.
  
  
• Universal Avenue, the Sales-as-a-Service platform which gives businesses on-demand access to a direct sales team in any location around the world, announced today that it has secured an additional $5 million to fuel expansion. This latest round is led by Northzone, with contribution from Salesforce Ventures along with existing investor MOOR. With local offices and teams now in Sweden, UK and Greece, Universal Avenue has begun to expand its European and global reach. Additional financing will be used to spur product growth and additional investments in sales and marketing.
  
  
• Germany's coramaze technologies recieved €4.5 million ($5.05 million) in a Series A round led by Israel's Elron Electronic Industries, making it the latest player in the burgeoning field of transcatheter mitral valve devices. Unlike Twelve, Tendyne and CardiacAQ, which recently agreed to be bought by industry bigwigs, coramaze's device is for mitral valve repair, not replacement. Medtronic, Abbott and Edwards dropped a combined $1 billion on those respective players in the transcatheter replacement space. High-Tech Gründerfonds also participated in the round, along with existing investor SeedCapital Dortmund and others.
  
  
• Voalte, the leader in healthcare communication technology, announced a new capital infusion of $17 million by Ascension Ventures, Cerner Capital, Inc., an affiliate of Cerner Corporation, and Bedford Funding. Series D funding closed on July 27, 2015, bringing the total capital Voalte has raised to nearly $60 million in three years. The new capital will be used to sustain a triple-digit growth trajectory for Voalte. The privately held company grew revenue by 250 percent year-over-year in the second quarter, due in large part to continual product innovation as well as a rapidly expanding customer base.
  
  
• Ascletis announced the completion of a US$35 million (RMB 220 million) financing. The investment was led by C-Bridge Capital, joined by Tasly Pharmaceutical and Singapore-based Pavilion Capital. The valuation of the Company before financing was US$300 million. The proceeds from this financing will be used to expand Ascletis' pipeline, strengthen global development capabilities and enhance GMP commercial manufacturing.
  
  
• Exosome Diagnostics, Inc., a developer of revolutionary, biofluid-based molecular diagnostics, today announced the completion of an additional $17.6 million round of financing in an extension of its Series B financing, bringing the total Series B financing raise to $44.7 million. Participating investors in this second Series B round included Forbion Capital Partners, NGN Capital, Arcus Ventures, Tiger Management and CD Ventures.
  
  
• ADC Therapeutics, a Lausanne, Switzerland-based oncology drug discovery and development company that specializes in the development of proprietary Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADCs) targeting major cancers, raised $80 million in equity funding. New investors include European and US-based investors alongside founding investor Auven Therapeutics and participation from AstraZeneca. The company intends to use the proceeds to progress its product portfolio, including ADCT-301 for lymphoma and leukemia now in Phase I and a collaboration to develop up to two ADCs for commercialization with MedImmune, the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca.
  
  
• Content marketing platform NewsCred announced a new round of $42 million to help it evolve into a broader marketing platform. Based around a brand’s need to control how its story is told, the seven-year-old company is now expanding beyond its content marketplace and distribution to a more generalized marketing platform. FTV Capital led this Series D round, with participation from existing investors FirstMark Capital, InterWest Partners, and Mayfield Fund.
  
  
• Bangalore-based Capillary Technologies Pvt Ltd, a SaaS-based CRM solutions provider, has secured around Rs 300 crore ($45 million) in a fresh round of funding led by private equity firm Warburg Pincus. Its existing investors Sequoia Capital and Norwest Venture Partners have also participated in the round. It added that the fresh round of investment has more than doubled the valuation of the company to about Rs 1,200 crore and that Capillary has already used the funds to acquire two startups: MartJack, a digital commerce solution company owned by Reasoning Global eApplications and machine learning startup Ruaha Labs. The company had also picked up a minority stake in customer satisfaction management firm CloudCherry recently.
  
  
• Tanium, the security and systems management startup, said today that it has secured a $120 million investment round led by private equity firm TPG and Institutional Venture Partners. Sources familiar with the terms of the deal say the investment values Tanium at $3.5 billion, or double the valuation it received in March when it accepted $52 million from the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz at a valuation of $1.75 billion.
  
  
• Apttus, a Quote-to-Cash solution provider, today announced it has raised $108 million in a Series C funding round. Investors in this round include Iconiq Capital, K1 Capital, KIA and Salesforce Ventures. This investment follows a $37M Series A round in September 2013 and a $41M Series B round in February 2015. The funds will be used to provide new business solutions and services to Apttus customers and prospects in fields such as manufacturing, life sciences, financial services and telecommunications. The round was led by KIA, the oldest, and one of the largest, sovereign wealth funds in the world. This investment will reinforce Apttus’ leading position within a marketplace opportunity it helped create in 2006.
  
  

If you are interested in being included in our funding roundup, submit your press release or blog post about your financing round to mitos@vator.tv. 

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