Daily funding roundup - August 31, 2015

Owl Ventures closed $100M; Cross Valley Ventures raised $20M; Instabase secured $3.8M

• DropKaffe – an online on-demand coffee shop, raised $300,000 funding led by Bangalore-based Manish Singhal and Silicon Valley based P39 Capital. Other investors include prominent angels from the U.S., India and Singapore. DropKaffe Founders DropKaffe started five months ago and is currently operational in Bangalore with plans to expand to more cities in the coming months. DropKaffe is founded by Rakshit Kejriwal, Lakshmi Dasaka, Chaitanya Chitta and Amar Yashlaha. Prior to DropKaffe, the team worked together on SmartOn – an education technology startup that was part of TechStars Accelerator in New York last year.
  
  
• Cross Valley Capital has raised a $20 million seed fund. The firm, based in Philadelphia, plans to invest in early-stage companies focused on digital health, hospitality, travel or logistics. The fund will target companies that use big data analytics and other technologies, according to founders and General Partners Jon Gosier and Rajat “RJ” Joshi. Cross Valley’s anchor LP was Rokk3r Labs, the Miami-based incubator of startups led by nanotech entrepreneur Nabyl Charania.
  
  
• Instabase, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a platform in the cloud for data, applications, and interactive computing, raised $3.75 million in seed funding. Backers included Greylock Partners and New Enterprise Associates (NEA). The company intends to use the funds to expand operations. It is hiring.
  
  
• San Carlos, Calif., startup PreNav has raised $1.2 million for a system that can automatically fly a drone within centimeters of a structure, allowing for close inspection of it by people who aren’t expert pilots. Investors in PreNav’s seed deal included Pejman Mar Ventures, Drone.vc, Oculus VR co-founder Michael Antonov and Toivo Annus.
  
  
• With just a year and a half of operational experience under its belt, Mayvenn has now raised $3 million in venture capital funding and has a network of over 25,000 stylists. With the continued mission to involve hair stylists in the process of buying and selling products, Imira and Wang’s goal is to eventually expand Mayvenn into an online platform that sells not only hair extensions but other hair care products as well.
  
  
• Bangalore-based Reverie Language Technologies, which makes text communication possible via instant transliteration and facilitates it across digital platforms and devices, has secured US$4 million in its Series A round of funding from Aspada Investment Company, a provider of long-term growth capital to entrepreneurs who address large market needs. Qualcomm Ventures, the VC investment arm of mobile technologies major Qualcomm, has also participated. Reverie will use the funds to expand operations into markets such as the Middle East and Southeast Asia, in addition to acquiring more customers. The investment shall also boost Reverie’s initiative of democratising the creation of multilingual apps, as it looks to extend its language platform to over 10,000 local language app developers over the next 12-18 months.
  
  
• MotionElements, a marketplace for stock video, animations, and after effects, today announced it raised an undisclosed amount in pre-series A funding. The round is led by KK Fund and joined by Incubate Fund and 500 Startups. Business plan in hand, the duo landed a small sum of seed funding from Singapore government agency MDA’s iJAM program. Since then, they’ve been careful with their spending, and have bootstrapped till today.
  
  
• Mobcrush, a live-streaming service centered around mobile games much in the same way Twitch is known for streaming popular eSports desktop games, has bagged around $10 million in new financing, though the number could have gone beyond that. Kleiner Perkins participated in the most recent funding round. 
  
  
• Lockheed Martin, DENSO International America and Intel Capital have invested $17 million in Peloton Technology, which provides a vehicle automation platform for trucks. Peloton's technology revolves around truck platooning, which allows tractor trailers to travel together at closer distances, improve aerodynamics and cut fuel use. Trucks are able to pair up through vehicle-to-vehicle communications, radar-based braking and control algorithms.
  
  
• Owl Ventures, which closed a $100 million fund to support startups that have demonstrated product-market fit. The San Francisco, CA-based fund will invest up to $8 million to lead Series A rounds, and contribute to Series B deals, for companies that deliver data-driven outcomes in US K-12 education. So far it has cast a wide net; current portfolio companies include Newsela, Panorama Education and Raise Labs, which respectively offer tools for literacy, school surveys and student scholarships.
  

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Image source: techinasia.com