Daily funding roundup - January 11, 2016

Cardiorentis secured $60M; BioAlta raised $45M; V-Wave completed $28M funding

• Wamda Capital, A Dubai based venture capital firm with Fadi Ghandour as its Chairman & CEO, has invested $1 million in The Luxury Closet, an online marketplace for pre-owned personal luxury goods. The Luxury Closet has acquired over 150,000 members and has over half a million monthly visitors from some 50 countries. 
  
  
• Askuity Inc., a provider of retail analytics software that enables product companies to grow and optimize their retail business, today announced the closing of its $2 million Series A funding round. Askuity will allocate this funding to accelerate sales and marketing efforts in both new and existing markets. Series A investors include existing investor dunnhumby Ventures, the venture investing arm of dunnhumby, and a group of angel investors with deep retail and consumer goods experience.
  
  
• Vericred, Inc., a healthcare technology startup delivering transparency solutions to the health insurance industry, has closed a second seed round raising $3.1 million through the sale of Series SEED II Convertible Preferred Stock to accredited investors.  Proceeds will be used to expand the company's data services and offerings while scaling its sales efforts.  The new round follows a Series SEED round of $1.125 million, which closed in November 2014.  Seventy-two percent of the first seed round investors participated in the second round.
  
  
• Cloud banking startup Mambu has raised €8 million (approximately $8.7 million) in a funding round led by Acton Capital Partners and CommerzVentures. The company, which has now pulled in €12 million worth of funding, says that it will use the cash to continue building upon its global momentum, having achieved over three times year-over-year growth and, during the last 12 months, adding 30-plus new customers, alongside a quadrupling of portfolio under management.
  
  
• Interfolio, a Washington, DC-based provider of academic decision support software, raised over $12 million in funding. The round was led by Quad Partners. The company intends to use the funds to fund strategic growth, to enhance its current services and software while developing tools and additional software for faculty administrative workflows.
  
  
• Aelix Therapeutics, a drug development company specialized in the discovery and development of immunotherapies against HIV infection, today announces that it has completed a Series A funding round of €11.5 million ($12.7 million). Ysios Capital, a Spanish investment fund, led the round. The fundraising was also supported by a syndicate of new investors including Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC Inc. ("JJDC"), and Caixa Capital Risc, the venture capital division of Spain’s leading financial group, 'la Caixa'.
  
  
• Sansan Inc., a Tokyo-based business contact management service wants to help companies put those business cards on the cloud. Today, the company announced a S$24.2 million (US$16.8 million) Series C funding round to accelerate product innovation and international business growth. Investors included Silicon Valley-based VC firm DCM Ventures, the strategic venture arm of Salesforce —Saleseforce Ventures — and Japanese early stage VC firm Nissay Capital. Additionally, Sansan is allocating S$4.2 million (US$2.8 million) towards extending its reach in Singapore, which, along with the US, is the company’s top market for international expansion.
  
  
• Accelerator Corporation, a leading life science investment and management firm, today announced the formation of Lodo Therapeutics Corporation to develop novel therapeutics derived from the company’s metagenomics-based small molecule discovery platform. The investors participating in the $17 million Series A financing include Accelerator New York’s investment syndicate partners: AbbVie, Alexandria Venture Investments, ARCH Venture Partners, Eli Lilly and Company, Harris & Harris Group, Inc., Innovate NY Fund, Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Inc., The Partnership Fund for New York City, Pfizer Venture Investments, Watson Fund and WuXi PharmaTech. The financing also includes investment participation by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
  
  
• V-Wave Ltd., a medical device company that is developing a proprietary implantable, interatrial shunt for the treatment of heart failure (HF), announced today that it has completed a Series B financing of $28 million. New investors included Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC Inc., TriVentures, Pura Vida Investments and BioStar Ventures. Also participating in the round are existing investors BRM Group, Pontifax and Edwards Lifesciences. The funds will support clinical evaluation and development, addition of senior management and manufacturing scale-up of V-Wave’s proprietary minimally invasive device for use in patients with chronic symptomatic HF. 
  
  
• BioAtla LLC, a global biotechnology company focused on the development of Conditionally Active Biologic (CAB) antibody therapeutics, today announced that Global BIO Impact Fund (Global BIO), a U.S.-based bioscience investment fund, has committed to invest $45 million in BioAtla. The investment will be $15 million in BioAtla equity by the end of January 2016 and $30 million by the end of March 2016 in direct funding for the early development of several CAB antibody candidates for BioAtla's proprietary portfolio. Through the program funding, Global BIO will share in the risks and the potential returns of BioAtla's first four CAB candidates that receive Investigational New Drug (IND) approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
  
  
• Cardiorentis AG, a Zug, Switzerland-based biopharmaceutical company committed to bringing novel therapies to the treatment of heart failure and related cardiovascular diseases, raised CHF60 million ($60 million) in a Series B financing. The round was led by three new private investors. The company intends to use the funds for the commercial build-out of Ularitide.
  
  
• Kymeta is a start-up focusing on using tiny satellite antennas. But the company has secured a new fund-raising round from some big backers, including Bill Gates. The roughly four-year-old Kymeta announced on Monday that it had raised $62 million in a new investment round, led by Mr. Gates, the venture capital firms Lux Capital and Osage University Partners, the Kresge Foundation and what the start-up described as new strategic partners.

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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