Daily funding roundup - January 18, 2016

JD.com raised $1B; Kartrocket secured $6M; Relativity Media received an undisclosed investment

• Boom Fantasy, a New York City-based provider of an in-game fantasy sports platform, raised $1.4 million in seed funding. The round was led by angel investor and Zynga CEO Mark Pincus, the Stanford-StartX Fund, and Rubicon Venture Capital, five Stanford business school professors, two professional athletes, and several mobile gaming executives. The company will use the funds to expand operations.
  
  
• AppyParking has just closed a $1.5 million (£1.05 million) Seed round, featuring investment from Aviva Ventures, the wholly owned venture capital business of Aviva. Irish parking solutions provider Premier Parking also took part in the round. The parking app allows drivers to see controlled parking zones, registered driveways, and car parks in selected cities and can direct users to spot of choice, via sat nav.
  
  
• WaveOptics, an Abingdon-on-Thames, UK-based Augmented Reality (AR) technology display developer, raised a multi-million pound funding round. The round was led by Imperial Innovations, with participation from Robert Bosch Venture Capital, Octopus Ventures, angel investors and existing investor Blippar. The company intends to use the funds enhance its position in the AR market with a focus on increasing its market penetration in enterprise and accelerating its level of engagement in the consumer market.
  
  
• Relativity Media, LLC, a Los Angeles, CA-based global media company, received an investment from Eric Schmidt’s TomorrowVentures, LLC. The amount of the deal was not disclosed. In conjunction with the deal, Court Coursey, a Managing Partner of TomorrowVentures, veteran business executive, and entrepreneur, has been appointed Chief Investment & Strategy Officer, to develop and execute Relativity’s ongoing vision as a next-generation global media company.
  
  
• Kartrocket, an e-commerce platform for SMEs and retailers, has raised $6 million led by Bertelsmann India Investments (BII), with participation from existing investors, Nirvana Digital India Fund, Nirvana Digital Investment, 500 Startups and Singapore-based Beenext. Kartrocket will use the funding for product and seller ecosystem development, hiring and marketing. In October 2014, Kartrocket raised close to $2 million in a Series A round of investment led by Nirvana Venture Advisors, with participation from Beenos and 500 Startups. In July 2013, it had raised an undisclosed amount of funding in a seed round.
  
  
• Silicon Valley and Israel-based Neura, a smart tech provider for the internet of things, has secured $11 million in Series A funding. AXA Strategic Ventures and Pitango Venture Capital led the round with participation from Liberty Israel Venture Fund and Lenovo Group. The Series A round will enable Neura to further realize its technological and business potential. Coinciding with the first open release of Neura development framework, designed to let developers personalize and contextualize their products – the funds will be used to expand Neura’s business reach and make the service ubiquitous.
  
  
• Online food delivery platform Swiggy said it has raised $35 million (Rs 235 crore) in its third round of funding at a time when the sector is seeing major pullback from investors. The Bengaluru-based startup has raised fresh funds from investors including SAIF Partners, Norwest Venture Partners and Accel Partners. New York-based Harmony Partners and Singapore's RB Investments were the new entrants in this round. Swiggy, which had raised $16.5 million in a Series B round, has over 5,000 restaurants listed on its platform with a presence in eight cities.
  
  
• Chinese e-commerce company JD.com Inc. said its financial subsidiary has raised 6.65 billion yuan ($1 billion) in financing, as competition intensifies among the country’s Internet giants to ramp up hugely popular offerings of online financial services. The financing round, which counts as its lead investors venture-capital firm Sequoia Capital China and China Taiping Insurance, values JD.com’s JD Finance subsidiary at 46.65 billion yuan ($7 billion) on a fully-diluted, post-investment basis, JD.com said in a news release.
  

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