Daily funding roundup - April 8, 2016

Getui bagged $180M; Twiggle secured $12.5M; KiteDesk completed $6M funding round

• RiskRecon landed seed-round financing led by General Catalyst Partners and several private investors. The funding will enable RiskRecon to expand its product development team and address the growing demand for data-driven, third-party vendor risk assessment. RiskRecon delivers actionable information security risk assessments and vendor ratings based on thorough analysis of a third-party's Internet infrastructure and application presence. By providing a faster and more objective data source, RiskRecon enables a more effective and productive vendor security assessment process.
  
  
• Luka, a San Francisco, CA-based free messaging app, raised $4.42 million in Series A funding round. The round was led by Sherpa Capital, with participation from Y Combinator, Ludlow Ventures and Justin Waldron, the co-founder of Zynga. In conjunction with the funding, Scott Stanford (Co-Founder, Sherpa Capital) joined Luka’s board of directors while Brian Pham (Principal, Sherpa Capital) joined as a Board Observer. The company intends to use the funds for engineering and product development purposes.
  
  
• KiteDesk, a Tampa, Fla.-based maker of smart sales prospecting software, completed a $6 million funding round in Q4 with $2 million of new capital. The round was led by Armada Investment and Imlay Investments. The company is using the funds to scale operations and accelerate its product plans. Founded by CTO Jared Rodriguez and VP of Products Jack Kennedy in 2011 and also led by CEO Sean Burke, and CMO Eric Quanstrom.
  
  
• RideCell, a transportation software startup, raised $11.7 million in new funding led by automaker BMW’s venture capital arm. The funds will be used to grow the startup’s engineering, data science, product, marketing, and sales teams, RideCell CEO Aarjav Trivedi. BMW i Ventures’ investment in RideCell comes as its parent, BMW, continues to scale up its DriveNow car-sharing service.
  
  
• Twiggle, a digital commerce search engine powered by data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, secured $12.5 million. Twiggle said in a statement that it intends to use the funds to continue its international expansion and challenge Amazon's A9 search engine in digital commerce search. The Series A round for the Israeli startup was led by South African multinational Naspers along with participation from Yahoo Japan, State of Mind Ventures, and Sir Ronald Cohen.
  
  
• AirMap, a startup that provides drone operators with airspace information to let them know when and where they can fly, raised a $15 million Series A funding round. The round was led by General Catalyst Partners, with Lux Capital (which led the company’s $2.6 million seed round), Social Capital, TenOneTen Ventures, Bullpen Capital and the Pritzker Group also participating.
  
  
• MedDay, a biotechnology company focused on the treatment of nervous system disorders, raised €34 Million ($38.5M) of new capital in a Series B financing round. Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners (EDRIP) led the new investment round alongside existing investors Sofinnova Partners and InnoBio (Bpifrance). Large Venture (Bpifrance) also participated in the operation.
  
  
• Getui, a third-party push notification service provider, bagged a 700 million RMB ($108 million) C round led by Haitong Securities and China Minsheng Bank, followed by all existing Series B investors including SAIF Partners and U.S. venture firm WI Harper. The proceeds will be used for expanding to big data and mobile marketing sector as well as the construction of business ecosystem, according to the company.

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Image source: venturebeat.com