Daily funding roundup -September 22, 2015

CloudFlare raised $110M; CoverHound secured $33.3M; Arrayent scored $11M

• The decision for CrunchBase become its own entity was spearheaded by Emergence Capital, who seems to have taken quite an interest in CrunchBase. Not only did the firm fund the company's spin-out, but it also selected McConnell as its new CEO, and it is also leading an investment round in CrunchBase. “At Emergence, our mission is to invest in the cloud visionaries who are building the most important business applications. The more we learned about CrunchBase, the more excited we became about its potential," Santi Subotovsky, Partner at Emergence Capital, said in a statement.
  
  
• Mini Exchange, an award-winning online marketplace for kids' fashion, has raised $1 million in seed funding. Sarah Jones, British entrepreneur and the founder of Mini Exchange, received support from strategic angel investors from the Middle East and Europe. From a mere 500 items at the start of 2014 to an offering of over 30,000 items from more than 250 international brands, the company has grown rapidly due to effective marketing campaigns and active social media presence.
  
  
• Townsville tech company SafetyCulture has announced that it has secured $6.1 million in its oversubscribed Series A round of funding – most of the investors in this round are existing shareholders. In November last year, the software development company, which offers a low cost checklist inspection app iAuditor, had raised $2 million, led by Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar. SafetyCulture had also raised $3 million in the previous year, which included a just under $1.8 million grant from Commercialisation Australia. The latest round brings the total amount of funds raised by the startup to a little under $11 million, with investors including Bill Tai, Blackbird Ventures and Farquhar, who is also a backer of Blackbird.
  
  
• Mumbai-based LogiNext is solving the aforementioned inefficiency by leveraging big data. The company has just confirmed that it has secured $10 million Series A from Alibaba-backed Paytm. Earlier in April this year, LogiNext had raised little over a half million USD seed round from Indian Angel Network. LogiNext aggregates the location data consumed from multiple clients with similar delivery networks, anonymizes it and then uses this power of real ‘big data’ to generate insights that helps companies predict delays, save cost and provide reliable customer service.
  
  
• Arrayent, a IoT platform company that helps the world's most trusted brands deliver connected products, announced an $11 million funding round with participation from DCM Ventures, Intel Capital, Opus Capital, Comerica Bank, and several leading angel investors. Partnering with leading investors like, DCM Ventures, Intel Capital, and Opus Capital will help bring the Arrayent Connect Platform to more brands and more products, increasing Arrayent's potential reach to hundreds of millions of consumers," said Cyril Brignone, CEO of Arrayent.
  
  
• Allset, a new mobile app for restaurants and busy lunchtime eaters, is launching today for free download on iOS and Android. The company is also closed of a $1.5 million round by SMRK VC Fund and private investor and entrepreneur Alexandr Chernyak. Allset launches for widespread use after successfully testing the app at twelve restaurants in San Francisco and Palo Alto popular with the lunch crowd (Arte Ristorante, Atlas Tap Room, Birba, Boulevard, Farmhouse Kitchen, Il Casaro, La Mar, Les Clos, Mochica, Prospect, The Lunchpad, The Monk’s Kettle). Beginning today, any restaurant in the United States is eligible to use the app to allow lunchtime diners to book a table, pre-order their food, and pre-pay the bill. Using Allset can save diners up to 40 minutes of the time that is usually spent eating out during the lunch rush.
  
  
• RouteHappy has secured a further three million investment with, this time, PAR Capital Ventures leading the Series B round. Existing investors iNovia Capital, which led a $3.3 million Series A round about 10 months ago, and Contour Venture Partners were also involved in this latest round. RouteHappy, which describes itself as an air travel product differentiation platform says it will devote the funds to its Hub which aims to help airlines and intermediary partners improve how airline products and services are presented and sold. 
  
  
• Globality, an ultra stealthy startup based in Menlo Park, has raised $10 million from a group of high profile angel investors to build an ambiguous new ecosystem for global trade. The funding comes from fourteen angel investors, including Al Gore, Sheryl Sandberg, former J.C. Penney CEO Ron Johnson, and Yahoo CFO Ken Goldman.
  
  
• French startup iAdvize just raised $16 million (€14 million) from Iris Capital, Bpifrance and existing investor Alven Capital. This company is all about making your online customer service experience suck less. iAdvize automatically detects visitors who need help and alerts your team members. Then, customer support representatives can contact their website visitors. 2,000 companies are using the product. With iAdvize, you can also add click to chat, click to call and other buttons to your website. Today’s funding round will be used to greatly expand the teams. Started in France, the company now plans to hire 100 people in the U.K., Germany, Spain and then the U.S. It already has 120 employees.
  
  
• Everyone Counts, a San Diego, CA-based provider of a tech election platform, scored $20 million in financing. The package included a $16 million mezzanine debt round which closely followed a $4 million equity round of funding. Falcon Investment Advisors led the mezzanine debt portion while Silicon Valley venture capital fund, Draper Associates, led the equity round. In conjunction with the financing, Falcon partner Rafael Fogel will join Everyone Counts’ board of directors. The company will use the funds to expand adoption of its platform.
  
  
• CoverHound, a site that lets people search for, compare and buy auto and property insurance both through its own site and Google’s insurance search, is today announcing that it has secured a further $33.3 million in funding as it adds one more large and strategic investor to its list of backers. Insurance giant ACE Group is leading the Series C investment, and CEO Keith Moore tells TechCrunch values the company at around $103 million, after the company hit a milestone of 50,000 policies sold in the last two years, growing 170% in the last 12 months.
  
  
• CloudFlare, an internet performance and security company, today announced it has raised $110 million in equity capital in a round led by Fidelity Management and Research Company, with strategic participation from Google Capital, Microsoft, Baidu, and Qualcomm Incorporated -- through its venture investment group, Qualcomm Ventures. CloudFlare will use the new funding and backing from global technology powerhouses to accelerate its rapid customer growth, extend product ranges to meet the demands of large enterprises, and expand into new international markets. The investment comes as the company's customer base reaches the four million mark globally, following expansion into more than 30 countries. In just the last month, CloudFlare has processed more than five percent of all Internet requests globally, and mitigated more than 200 billion cyberattacks on behalf of its customers.

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Image source: av-pfandhous.at