Daily funding roundup - April 5, 2016

Human Longevity bagged $220M Series B; Persado closed $30M; Sequoia Capital invested in Mintigo

• London-based on-demand delivery company Jinn closed a $7.5 million Series A round of funding, according to TechCrunch, led by Samaipata Ventures with participation from Elderstreet, Bull Partners and existing angel investors. The CEO and founding partner of the Madrid-based VC firm Samaipata is José del Barrio, who co-founded Spanish food delivery service La Nevera Roja in 2011. In 2015, he sold the company to Rocket Internet for €80 million (approximately $100 million), and stayed on for a few months to help with the transition.
  
  
• David Sobie and Mark Geller raised $1.9 million in seed funding for their startup, Happy Returns, which is pitching e-commerce sites on allowing customers to return purchases to Happy Returns kiosks in brick-and-mortar stores or malls. The goal is to let online shoppers get free, instant refunds by returning orders to a physical store — an option that the founders believe will lead to increased sales. Upfront Ventures led the seed round, while Lowercase Capital and Maveron also participated.
  
  
• Polyverse Corporation, a startup based in Kirkland, WA, secured an additional $2 million in funding. Half of Polyverse’s latest financing round was provided by SpringRock Ventures, a Seattle, WA-based venture-capital firm that invests in early to late stage companies with high growth potential. The remainder came from Polyverse’s existing investors.
  
  
• LiveSafe, Inc., an Arlington, Va.-based mobile safety communications platform, received $5.25 million in Series B venture capital funding. The investment was made by an affiliated entity of FedEx Corp. Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Frederick W. Smith, who will also become a member of LiveSafe’s board of directors.
  
  
• Jinn, a food and goods delivery startup that lets people in London and Manchester order from almost any restaurant, raised a $7.5 million (£5.2 million) Series A funding round. The funding comes from Samaipata Ventures, Elderstreet, Bull Partners, and angel investors who had already invested in the company. Madrid-based Samaipata Ventures is a relatively new VC fund that looks to invest in e-commerce companies in Europe.
  
  
• San Francisco-based Virool, a provider of a video marketing platform, raised $12 million in Series A funding from Menlo Ventures, Yahoo Japan, Flint Capital and 500 Startups. The company, which is a graduate of the Y Combinator incubator program, previously raised $6.62 million in seed-stage funding from VC firms and individuals, including FundersClub, Troy Carter and Farzad “Zod” Nazem.
  
  
• Influenster, a go-to product discovery and reviews platform,  closed an $8 million round of funding from Ebates, a pioneer and leader in online cashback shopping and subsidiary of the global Internet services company, Rakuten. Following this investment, Ken Hirschman, Ebates’ Vice President of Strategic Alliances, will join Influenster’s board of directors. The funding will set Influenster on its trajectory towards becoming a full-fledged product discovery platform. Influenster offers its community of over 1.7 million socially-savvy members the opportunity to find new products and get advice to make informed purchases. 
  
  
• ManoMano, a French online DIY and gardening ecommerce platform, raised €13 million (approximately $14.78 million) in vc funding. Backers included Piton Capital, CM-CIC Capital Privé, Partech Ventures, and Digital Ambition Fund. The company intends to use the funds to expand in additional European countries. Launched in 2013 by Christian Raisson and Philippe de Chanville, ManoMano operates a social platform specializing in offering DIY, bricolage, gardening and renovation products.
  
  
• Mintigo has generated 700 per cent growth in 2015, partnering with enterprise customers such as Oracle, Getty Images, Equinix, SolarWinds and Red Hat. With market traction increasing, the company today announced that Sequoia Capital led a funding round by investing $15 million to support Mintigo’s rapid growth. Mintigo has a cloud-based software platform that enables sales and marketing teams to use data and predictive analytics to increase sales.
  
  
• Palamon Capital Partners completed a 20 million pound ($28.4 million) funding round, alongside two-coinvestors, for Feelunique.com. Palamon committed 5 million pounds to Feelunique.com alongside two co-investors. Feelunique.com, a portfolio company of Palamon, is an online retailer of haircare, skincare, cosmetics and fragrances products. The £20 million of funding will be used to continue driving growth in the UK market and finance expansion in Continental Europe by establishing a local presence in France, Europe’s largest beauty retail market.
  
  
• Persado — a content generation platform that uses machine learning, natural language processing, and math to help generate content that converts — closed a $30 million Series C round to help automate content marketing production. Today’s funding round is led by Goldman Sachs, with contributions from previous investors Bain Capital Ventures, StarVest Partners, American Express Ventures, and Citi Ventures.
  
  
• Human Longevity, Inc. (HLI), a San Diego, CA-based genomics-based, technology-driven company, raised in excess of $220 million in Series B funding. Backers included Illumina, Celgene, GE Ventures, and Series A investors, which represent a diverse geographic pool of investors based in the United Kingdom, Malaysia, Mexico, Australia, Kuwait, Hong Kong, and China, in addition to the US.

If you are interested in being included in our funding roundup, submit your press release or blog post about your financing round to mitos@vator.tv. 

Image source: udemy.com