Daily funding roundup - September 16, 2015

Sunlight Financial bagged $300M; Lightspeed secured $61M; Omada Health raised $48M

• We don't talk about it much in this country for some reason, but diabetes and heart disease are huge problems. So big that three out of four Americans now have some type of chronic condition, costing more than $500 billion a year. The thing is that at least half of them are related to lifestyle choices, which is where digital therapeutics company Omada Health comes in. The company seeks to help prevent these types of disease by helping patients change their behavior and patterns using insights about social networking, gaming, and behavioral science. Frankly it's a better, and more cost effective, way to treat disease, and VCs agree with the approach, as the company announced on Wednesday that it has raised $48 million in Series C funding in a round. The round was led by Norwest Venture Partners, along with two of Omada's customers and health care leaders: Humana Inc. and Providence Health & Services. Prior investors US Venture Partners, Rock Health and Andreessen Horowitz, and new investors GE Ventures and dRx Capital, also contributed.
  
  
• Envoy is a family concierge service for seniors and family caregivers, and today it has launched in San Antonio, now making it available in 17 markets across 7 U.S. states. To support this massive expansion and its operations, Envoy has also raised a $3 million seed round led by SoftTech VC. Available as a subscription service, Envoy specializes in providing assistance to seniors who need “lightweight help and support.” It’s not meant to replace conventional in-home care, but rather to offer assistance with groceries, personal shopping, running errands, picking up prescriptions, and doing in-home tasks like washing dishes or changing a lightbulb. The idea is to allow seniors to be independent, but give them some support if they need it.
  
  
• Iron.io today announced that it has raised a $8 million Series A round led by Baseline Ventures with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, Divergent Ventures, Ignition Partners, and Cloud Capital Partners. The company previously raised a total of $5.5 million in seed funding. The company’s two flagship products are the IronMQ message queue service and theIronWorker worker platform for running parallel tasks at scale. At its core, these services are meant to make it easier for developers to adopt a microservices architecture — that is breaking down traditionally complex applications into smaller, more manageable independent parts that talk to each other over APIs.
  
  
• LearnUp, an innovative technology company that is tackling America's skills gap, announced today that it has finalized $8 million in Series A financing co-led by venture capital firms New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Shasta Ventures, with participation from Greylock Partners, Floodgate, and High Line Venture Partners. The new funding will be used to expand LearnUp's products and partnerships across industries, including retail, call centers, hospitality, food service and more.
  
  
• Tea retail chain Chai Point has secured $10 million in a new round led by Fidelity’s proprietary investment arm, Eight Roads Ventures (formerly Fidelity Growth Partners India), with participation from Saama Capital and DSG Consumer Partners. The company will use the funds for expansion, hiring, and sprucing up its technology part. Chai Point is one of the early entrants in the organised tea chain business and targets market of young working professionals via its network of stores, dispensers on corporate premises and a recently launched delivery business. Earlier, the company had raised a seed round followed by a $2 million round by Saama Capital.
  
  
• HelloTech, a Los Angeles-based firm that wants to become the Uber of home tech support, said it has raised a $12.5 million Series A funding round led by Madrona Venture Group. The firm pairs savvy college students with consumers who need a bit of technical support. HelloTech promises service within 24 hours and charges $79 an hour. There’s even a way for adult children to buy this service for their parents. The funding round also includes participation from Upfront Ventures, CrossCut Ventures and Accel Partners.
  
  
• Lumity, a data driven benefits platform, announced $14 million in Series A funding led by The Social+Capital Partnership with participation from True Ventures and Rock Health. As a broker, Lumity's free software and dedicated support staff helps employers and their employees intelligently and cost-efficiently manage their health insurance needs by offering plans and benefits specifically tailored to each customer. The funding will help Lumity propel and scale the rollout of its data-driven benefits platform. 
  
  
• Japanese micro-satellite maker Axelspace today announced a JPY 1.8 billion ($15 million) series A round led by Global Brain and joined by five other Japanese VCs. Mitsui & Co., one of Japan’s largest trading companies, and the Sky Perfect JSAT broadcasting company also contributed. Both Mitsui and Sky Perfect will also enter into business alliances with the startup. Founded in 2008, Tokyo-based Axelspace will use the funding to develop three micro-satellites that are anticipated to launch in 2017. The satellites, dubbed “GRUS,” will allow Axelspace to enter the private satellite imaging and data service market.
  
  
• Israeli VPN startup Hola – or as many users know it, that company behind the Hola Unblocker VPN proxy service that allows you to mask yourself as a resident of another country, such as the U.S. or UK, to access country-restricted video content sites like Netflix or Amazon – announced on Wednesday that it has raised $17 million in Series C funding. The round, led by Iris Capital and joined by Hola’s existing investors, will help accelerate their video delivery service and increase engineering and product management staff from 75 to 200. To date Hola, which Derry Shribman and Ofer Vilenski founded, has raised a total of $30 million.
  
  
• Agora, Inc., a Palo Alto, CA-based communications as a service (CaaS) provider, received $20 million in Series B funding. Backers included Morningside, SIG, GGV Capital, ShunWei, and IDG. The company, which has raised $25.9 million in total funding, will use the capital to further expand its global infrastructure and sales and marketing initiatives.
  
  
• Lightspeed, a cloud POS platform for retailers and restaurants, announced US$61 million in funding co-led by Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (CDPQ) and Investissement Quebec (IQ), alongside existing investors Accel Partners and iNovia Capital. This brings Lightspeed's total funding to date to US$126 million. The financing will support the company's rapid global growth, technology infrastructure enhancements and deeper investment in its omnichannel offering. Currently more than 25,000 customers in over 100 countries use Lightspeed to build, manage and grow their stores and restaurants, online and offline. The company has seen 123 percent year-over-year growth and its customers now process over $10 billion annually.
  
  
• Evolution Equity Partners is pleased to announce the first close of The Evolution Technology Fund L.P. focused on growth stage investments in cybersecurity and next generation enterprise software and services in the U.S. and Europe. Evolution has secured $70 million in commitments with an ultimate target of $125 million for the Fund. The Fund’s first two investments are in high-growth cybersecurity companies: SecurityScorecard and Onapsis.
  
  
• Sunlight Financial LLC, a provider of financing for the residential solar market, announced the closing of a series of capital investments, providing access to $300 million of capital, including $80 million of growth capital from lead investor Tiger Infrastructure Partners, an independent private equity firm focused on providing growth equity for middle-market infrastructure assets and businesses in North America, and founding investor Hudson Clean Energy Partners, a leading global private equity firm specializing in renewable energy. Sunlight will direct this round of capital towards growing its business platform and increasing access to lower cost financing alternatives for residential rooftop solar assets.
  
  
• BlaBlaCar, a Paris-based ride-sharing service, announced a funding round of $200 million. The amount blew past reports last week that the funding round would come in at $160 million.  It’s a massive boost to a French Tech scene that has been gaining momentum, but is still looking for some high-profile successes.BlaBlaCar, founded in 2006, is now valued at $1.6 billion. Having grown to cover much of Europe, the company has been expanding into markets such as Russia, Turkey and India.
  
  

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