Hotel Urbano landed $60M; Bizzy scored $2.5M; AffinityLive raised $2M
- Hotel Urbano, an online platform that allows travelers to find and reserve accommodation and activities, and one of the fastest growing travel sites in Brazil, is about to get a major boost from one of the biggest players in the travel space. Online travel company Priceline Group announced that is has formed a strategic partnership with Hotel Urbano, which consists of a commercial agreement between the two sides, along with a minority investment by The Priceline Group of $60 million in exchange for a minority interest into Hotel Urbano. Any additional terms of the deal, including the stake that Priceline now has in the company, have not been disclosed. The company had previously raised $75 million, including a $50 million round in March of last year, which had valued it at $450 million. Previous investors included Insight Venture Partners and Tiger Global Management.
- 33coupons.in, a Kanpur, India-based coupon aggregator site, nabbed $20k in angel funding. An undisclosed backer made the investment. The company intends to use the funds to improve and enhance the overall user experience of the existing mobile and desktop sites adding more categories and stores and to launch an android based application as well as for marketing and promotions. Led by Sanjeev Kumar, founder, 33coupons.in is a tool to find online coupons and various deals available on all leading online stores in India. Users can get a listing of all sorts of deals, coupon codes, cash back offers, freebies and discount vouchers.
- Ardent Capital put $2.5 million into its new Jakarta-based ecommerce site Bizzy, a marketplace that helps small and medium-sized businesses, as well as large corporates, fulfill their office equipment needs.
- AffinityLive, a San Francisco, CA-based maker of business automation software, raised $2 million in funding. The round was led by Blackbird Ventures, with participation from Rothenberg Ventures, Ben Gumbiner, Dave Burlington, Sandy Kory and Steve Outtrim. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate client growth and product innovation as well as more than triple its staff across both sales and marketing teams as well as the product development and engineering team.
- Chinese mobile game publisher Ourpalm invested $2.3 million into Garfield’s Escape developer Animoca Brands. The move sees the publisher take an 11.1 percent stake in the Hong Kong-based studio, valuing it at around $28m. There is also an option in the deal for further investment of up to $5m should the share price reach 150 per cent of the current price of its investment. Ourpalm co-CEO Steven Hu has been appointed to the Animoca board as non-executive director.
- Salsify, a Boston, MA-based platform that enables the creation and exchange of rich product content between brand manufacturers and their retail partners, raised $16.6M in Series B funding. The round was led by Venrock, with participation from existing investors Matrix Partners and North Bridge, as well as Michael Skok. The company, which has now raised $24.6M in total funding, intends to use the funds for further product development and investment in corporate growth. Led by Jason Purcell, co-founder and CEO, Salsify provides brands with a SaaS-based platform to create and deliver product information to retailers.
- BZT Fashion, the company behind Nordic fashion ecommerce store Boozt raised DKK 200 million (€26 million) from investors Sampension, Friheden Invest and a group of current shareholders including Sunstone Capital and Verdane. The fashion portal seems to be growing strongly with an annual revenue growth of around 70% since 2011, hoping to hit SEK 1 Billion (€106 million this year). The company is located in the Oresund region with Danish management, approximately 140 employees at its headquarters in Malmö and approximately 100 employees at the warehouse in Ängelholm.
- Hector Beverages, maker of ethnic drinks brand Paper Boat, nabbed $28.7 million in funding led by Belgian investor Sofina and China's Hillhouse Capital, underscoring investors' continuing attraction to domestic consumer companies. Existing investors Sequoia Capital and Catamaran Ventures also participated in Hector's largest fundraise since its inception in 2010, which, according to estimates by investment bankers, values the company at Rs 400 crore-Rs 500 crore, or 2.5-4 times revenue.
- Axègaz, a Levallois Perret, France-based small scale liquid natural gas (LNG) supplier, raised €3.7m in funding. Backers included investment fund 123 Venture, which acquired approx. a 10% stake, among others. The company intends to use the funds to launch its industrialization phase and speed up its commercial development in France and Europe. Founded in 2012 by Alfonso Morriello, CEO, Axègaz specializes in liquid natural gas (LNG) supply. The company targets customer segments of industry, transportation, and local distribution networks serving residential and tertiary activities.
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Kristin Karaoglu
