Daily funding roundup - August 11, 2015

Insight Venture Partners closed $4.75B; Kensington Capital closed $237M; Unify Square raised $4M

• Despite being around for decades, enterprise communication and its legacy infrastructure has seen little technological advancement over all these years. Unify Square, a provider of software and services designed to monitor and manage Skype for Business in Fortune 500 enterprises, is a company that has taken advantage of that opportunity, and now it's added another $4 million to its Series B round of funding, it was announced on Tuesday. With the $8.2 million it secured back in February 2015, that brings the total round to $12.2 million. Investors in the latest round include Microsoft, Bridge Bank, Stanford University and other original Series B investors, including former executives at Ariba, Yahoo and IBM.
  
  
• Liverpool-based LivingLens, a software provider that enable brands to be just one click away from their consumers through the use of capture and video data mining technologies, has secured £1million in Series A funding. The mix of investors, some from LivingLens’ 2014 involvement in the Collider Accelerator program, and successful marketeers and financiers, have committed further funding to support the continued growth of the organization.
  
  
• HUVRData, LLC, a Houston, TX-based drone-based data analytics startup, raised $2 million in funding. Backers included Central Texas Angel Network (CTAN), Houston Angel Network (HAN) and the Texas HALO Fund. The company intends to use the funds to expand operations.
  
  
• PaidEasy, a mobile payments start-up based in NYC, announced a seed round of funding valued at $2 million from a private investor, Ivor Ichikowitz. PaidEasy just launched out of beta this week and plans to use the money to establish a footprint in New York City and its surrounding areas.
  
  
• Germany’s StyleLounge, which operates a metasearch engine for clothing and lifestyle products, raised a Series A round of funding. Backing comes from TA Ventures, Axivate Capital, ASTUTIA Ventures, a number of family offices and Felix Jahn, founder of Home24 and former Managing Director of Rocket Internet, who StyleLounge also counts as a co-founder.
  
  
• Livspace, India’s first and only end-to-end home design and décor platform for homeowners and designers, announced that it has raised $8 million, in an internal round of funding. This round of funding comes within months of the launch and the Series A round of $4.6 million. The funds will be used to accelerate Livspace’s strong momentum across product and design innovation, user engagement on mobile and web, and revenue growth.
  
  
• CENX, a Lifecycle Service Orchestration solutions for software-defined and virtualized networks, finalized new equity investment totaling $12.5 million. New investors BDC Capital, Mistral Venture Partners, and VMware joined the Series D financing round.  This investment will help accelerate CENX's global market and portfolio expansion in addressing emerging requirements for Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO) for service providers that are evolving to Software-defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) technologies.
  
  
• The startup C2FO, which runs an invoice marketplace, raised $40 million from Temasek Holdings Ltd. and other investors.  The investment in fintech is set to outpace the previous record of $16.5 billion and 1,253 deals completed in 2014.
  
  
• Ovid Therapeutics Inc., a privately held biopharmaceutical company focused on developing therapies for rare and orphan diseases of the brain, completed a Series B financing totaling $75 million. Fidelity Management and Research Company led the investment syndicate, which included Cowen Private Investments, Sanofi-Genzyme BioVentures, Tekla Capital Management, Sphera Global Healthcare Fund, Jennison Associates (on behalf of certain clients), Redmile Group, and Cormorant Asset Management, as well as additional blue chip mutual funds and leading life sciences investors. Existing Ovid investors, including DoubleLine Equity Healthcare Fund, LLC, also participated in the financing.
  
  
• Kensington Capital Partners, an independent Canadian investor in alternative assets, announced the third closing of the Kensington Venture Fund (“Fund”) increasing total investor commitments to the Fund to $237 million. The Fund’s third closing includes new commitments from institutional, family office and individual investors. Launched in November 2014 with $160 million in initial investor commitments, the Fund received a lead investment from the Government of Canada’s Venture Capital Action Plan (VCAP), a $400 million strategy designed to increase private sector investments in emerging Canadian technology companies.
  
  
• Simworx, a West Midlands theme park ride company, secured $7 million to upgrade its rides for adrenalin junkies around the world. Simworx, which designed and built the Angry Birds 4D cinema at Thorpe Park and created one of the main attractions at the new Shrek’s Adventure theme park in London, is using part of the investment to acquire Leamington Spa based RoboCoaster. The investment from the Business Growth Fund will also allow Simworx to double the size of its production facility in Kingswinford, West Mids, increasing staff numbers from 30 to 50 over 12 months.
  
  
• New York-based venture capital and private equity firm Insight Venture Partners, announced the closing of Insight Venture Partners IX, L.P., a $3.29 billion fund, and Insight Venture Partners Growth-Buyout Coinvestment Fund, L.P., a $1.46 billion co-investment vehicle that will co-invest in control transactions with Fund IX. The new capital will be deployed for growth equity in software and internet companies globally; it maintains Insight's mission to find, fund and work with visionary companies and to provide management teams with growth expertise that helps deliver long-term success.
  

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