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Remote work is no longer a new topic, as much of the world has now been doing it for a year or more because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Remote working platforms have evolved with Gatheround gaining traction. Gatheround’s video conversations aim to be a refreshing complement to Slack conversations. Gatheround raised $3.5million last year to build their platform. Gatheround customer base, includes 28 Fortune 500s, 11 of the biggest U.S. tech companies, 26 top universities and more than 700 educational institutions. Gatheround is not the only company attempting to tackle this space. Ireland-based Workvivo last year raised $16 million and earlier this year, Microsoft launched Viva, its new employee experience platform.

Basecamp sees mass employee exits after CEO bans political discussions. The company employs around 60 people, and roughly a third of the company appears to have accepted buyouts to leave, many citing new company policies. The no-politics rule at Basecamp follows a similar stance to Coinbase. Basecamp was immediately criticized for muzzling its employees over important issues, many of which disproportionately impact marginalized employees.

Sony announces investment and partnership with Discord to bring the chat app to PlayStation. that will integrate the latter’s popular gaming-focused chat app with PlayStation’s own built-in social tools. Sony appears to have offered a better deal than Microsoft, taking an undisclosed minority stake in the company ahead of a rumored IPO. Sony has done its part, financially speaking, by taking part in Discord’s recent $100 million H round.

Clubhouse begins externally testing its Android app. The voice-based networking app that’s now being knocked off by every major tech platform, is bringing its service to Android. The company has announced that its Android version has entered beta testing with a handful of non-employees who will provide the company with early feedback ahead of a public launch. The lack of an Android client combined with its invite system initially gave Clubhouse an aura of exclusivity. But the delay to provide access to Android users also gave larger competitors time to catch up with Clubhouse. Clubhouse didn’t give a specific time frame as to when its Android app would reach more testers or the wider public, only noting that it’s looking forward to welcoming more Android users in the coming weeks.

Tunisian-French SaaS startup Expensya raises $20 million in fresh funds from Paris-based MAIF Avenir and Amman-based Silicon Badia. The Series B round takes Expensya’s total raise to date to over $25 million, making it the best-funded Tunisian startup and one of the best-funded SaaS startups of the Middle East & North Africa. Founded in 2014 by Karim Jouini and Jihed Othmani, Expensya’s online software automates expense management for businesses, Expensya currently serves over 5,000 customers in over 100 countries.

Cornerstone Venture Partners  Fund of Mumbai comes out with the CGES Index, seeking to position it as the country’s first global enterprise Software as a Service (SaaS) index. The SEBI-approved fund, which has been investing in early-stage and high-growth SaaS firms, believes this to be a game changing index, given that $20 billion is the global revenue estimated from enterprise SaaS firms. The index, is composed of the top 30 globally-listed public Enterprise SaaS companies, such as Salesforce, Zoom, Shopify, and tracks the movement of these stocks on global stock exchanges real-time. The Index tracks comparative performance with Nasdaq Composite, S&P 500, and the Dow Jones Index, and has shown tremendous growth over the last 24 months.

Chargebee sets sights on new verticals, global expansion. With the pandemic, there has been a global shift towards subscription models and billing solutions at scale. To capitalise on this, Chargebee is investing in acquiring customers from other verticals such as Internet of Things (IoT), ed-tech, and e-commerce, said Santhanam. As the company works at acquiring new customers, it also expects to invest in research and development to introduce new services and tools. This could include developing analytics tools to help companies make better decisions.

Gurugram SaaS startup HyperTest is building software by automating the entire QA process. HyperTest integrates with any application or product and monitors every user interaction to automatically build, run, and maintain end-to-end tests, which updates itself with new features without prompting QA team to write a single line of code. Last year , HyperTest raised $400,000 in a seed round from Axilor, Touchstone, and a clutch of angels from Lead Angels. The startup is using the funds to build products and improve its sales and marketing functions.

Eka Unveils E-Sourcing, A Cloud-Based Source-To-Pay Solution To Drive A New Era Of Digitalization In Supplier Management. Cloud-based software provider Eka aims to transform legacy-based supply chain workflows with the unveiling of its platform driven E-Sourcing solution that delivers a new standard in collaboration, transparency, efficiency and quality assurance across a wide range of business functions and industries. Eka’s strength in harnessing the power of cloud platform, coupled with its ongoing investment into research and development, means the company is focused on building solutions that are continually enhanced.

IBM and NeuVector extend container security partnership. NeuVector announced that the Kubernetes-native, end-to-end container security solution is now available to IBM Cloud customers through the IBM Cloud catalog. NeuVector is also announcing platform integration with IBM Security QRadar, IBM’s security information and event management solution. IBM Cloud customers can find NeuVector in the Security section of the IBM Cloud catalog, and then initiate a free trial or paid subscription.

Amazon’s cloud division reports 32% revenue growth. AWS has come to play a crucial role at Amazon as its most reliable source of income. “We have firm confidence that we offer a lot of advantages to AWS customers, from functionality to a vibrant and robust partner ecosystem,”  said Brian Olsavsky, Amazon’s finance chief.

Wunderite, Boston-based software startup, raises $3M to build software for indie insurance agencies. The early-stage round was led by Spark Capital. Wunderite builds and sells software designed to help insurance agencies more rapidly process insurance applications, and automate some of their processes. The funding will be used to build their sales team and expand.
Cloud infrastructure market keeps rolling in Q1 with almost $40B in revenue. Conventional wisdom over the last year has suggested that the pandemic has driven companies to the cloud much faster than they ever would have gone without that forcing event, with some suggesting it has compressed years of transformation into months.Cloud gaming service Shadow get acquired by OVHcloud founder. Shadow is a cloud computing service for gamers. People can pay a monthly subscription fee and gain access to a gaming PC in a data center. Subscriptions currently start at €12.99 per month in Europe or $11.99 per month in the U.S. It’s unclear whether Shadow will remain available at this price point, how specifications are going to evolve if the company is going to spin up more servers to attract new clients.

RapidDeploy, which provides computer-aided dispatch technology as a cloud-based service for 911 centers, raises $29 million in Series B round of funding. The firm states that the funding will be used both to grow its business and continue expanding the SaaS tools that it provides to its customers. In the startup’s point of view, the cloud is essential to running emergency response in the most efficient manner.
Gr4vy a cloud-native payments company with a payment orchestration platform  that merges a cloud platform with payments infrastructure raises a Series A funding round of $11.1 million, led by Nyca Partners (a VC with a bench of partners who are ex-Visa ), with participation from Activant Capital (a fintech investor), Global Founders Capital and Firestartr, bringing its total funding to $12.2 million. Gr4vy, acts as a conduit between retailers’ shopping carts and payment providers. By offering instances it can give retailers individualized infrastructure in the cloud. The launch of Gr4vy comes at a key time for online retailers as the world moves from part online shopping to almost 100% online because of the pandemic.IBM is acquiring cloud app and network management firm Turbonomic for up to $2B. Turbonomic, provides tools to manage application performance along with Kubernetes and network performance. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Turbonomic was valued at nearly $1 billion in its last funding round in September 2019. Together Red Hat and IBM have been developing a range of cloud-based tools addressing telco, edge and enterprise use cases.This latest deal will help extend that further. Last November IBM acquired another company called Instana to bring application performance management into its stable, and it pointed out today that the Turbonomic deal will complement that and the two technologies’ tools will be integrated together.Wasabi raises $112M Series C on $700M valuation to take on cloud storage hyperscalers. Fidelity Management & Research Company led the round. Wasabi storage starts at $5.99 per terabyte per month, a lot cheaper than Amazon S3, which starts at 0.23 per gigabyte for the first 50 terabytes or $23.00 a terabyte, considerably more than Wasabi’s offering.Firstbase a software-and-hardware solution to get remote workers the tools and support they need raises $13 million in Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz. B Capital Group and Alpaca VC.  The company will focus on building more enterprise-friendly software features with its new capital, allowing it to target larger customers.

Thiruvananthapuram-based cloud dental software startup CareStack  raises $22.5 Mn from Steadview Capital, Delta Dental of California, Accel Partners, Eight Roads and F-Prime Capital. CareStack’s single all-in-one SaaS platform on the cloud combines dental practice management, patient engagement, practice marketing, and data analytics. The company claims to have doubled its revenue last year and has stated that its workforce has grown from 200 employees at the beginning of the year to 370 employees at present. In 2019, the company had raised $28 Mn from the same investors. With the recent funding, CareStack’s total funding raised is over $60 Mn.Ivorian startup Afrikrea partners with DHL and Visa to launch SaaS e-commerce platform ANKA. Ivorian  e-commerce startup Afrikrea started as a marketplace for African-based and inspired clothing, accessories, arts, and crafts. Over the past five years, Afrikrea has been serving more than 7,000 sellers from 47 African countries and buyers from 170 countries. Last year, Afrikrea began testing an all-in-one SaaS e-commerce platform for these merchants. With it’s launch, the platform called ANKA will allow users to sell from Africa, ship products to anywhere in the world and get paid through local and international African payment methods.BoostUp.ai, provider of a software-as-a-service  platform for managing revenue operations infused with AI capabilities raises $6 million in series A funding, bringing its total raised to $14 million, after an initial seed round last year.The company is part of a growing cadre of startups attempting to unify sales, marketing, and customer service processes in a way that enables organizations to boost sales and increase overall profitability. BoostUp claims its revenue has increased by more than 1,000% in fiscal 2020, with an active contribution to its revenue through customers such as Udemy, Degreed, Plume, and Windstream.Opsera, a startup that’s building an orchestration platform for DevOps teams raises  $15 million Series A funding round led by Felicis Ventures. New investor HMG Ventures, as well as existing investors Clear Ventures, Trinity Partners and Firebolt Ventures also participated in this round, which brings the company’s total funding to $19.3 million. Founded in January 2020, Opsera lets developers provision their CI/CD tools through a single framework. Opsera plans to use the new funding to grow its engineering team and accelerate its go-to-market efforts

Stripe acquires TaxJar to add cloud-based, automated sales tax tools into its payments platform. The privately-held payments company now valued at $95 billion, has made an acquisition to expand the range of tools (and services) that it provides to online businesses. It has acquired TaxJar, a popular provider of a cloud-based suite of tax services, which can be used to automatically calculate, report and file sales taxes. Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed. Stripe has confirmed that all 200 employees of Woburn, Massachusetts-based TaxJar are joining the company.
Location data analytics startup Placer.ai raises $50M Series B. This was led by Josh Buckley, the chief executive officer of Product Hunt, Todd Goldberg and Rahul Vohra. The new capital will be used on research and development and expanding Placer.ai’s sales and marketing teams. The foot traffic and location analytics startup saw growth in new categories, including consumer packaged goods (CPG) and hedge funds that use its tech to perform due diligence.
Tellius announces $8M Series A to build ML-fueled business data query tool. The raise was led by Sands Capital Ventures, with participation from Grotech. Today’s investment brings the total raised to $17 million, according to the company. CEO and founder Ajay Khanna stated that the company is attempting to merge two technologies that have traditionally lived in silos: business intelligence and artificial intelligence.
Canada’s newest unicorn: Clio raises $110M at a $1.6B valuation for legal tech. Th Series E round was co-led by T. Rowe Price Associates Inc. and OMERS Growth Equity. The company’s platform aims to serve as an operating system for lawyers, offering cloud-based legal practice management, client intake and legal CRM software. Clio has more than 150,000 customers across 100 countries. Many of the lawyers using Clio are smaller and solo practitioners, but the company also serves larger firms such as Locks Law and King Law.

Berlin based n8n raises $12M in Series A for its ‘fair code’ approach to low-code workflow automation. The startup plans to use the money to continue expanding its team, which now numbers 60 people, and to expand its platform and the services it provides to users. Currently, n8n  helps link up and integrate data and functions between more than 200 established applications, as well as any custom apps or services that is specific to an organization. The round is being led by Felicis Ventures, with Sequoia Capital, firstminute Capital and Harpoon Ventures.  The startup has now raised around $14 million and is not disclosing valuation.
 
Mighty Networks, a platform designed to give creators and brands a dedicated place to start and grow communities, has closed on $50 million in a Series B funding round led by Owl Ventures. The company’s flagship Business Plan product is aimed at new creators with the goal of giving them an easy way to get started with digital subscriptions. Established brands, organizations and successful creators use the company’s Mighty Pro plan to get everything Mighty Networks offers on their own branded iOS, iPad and Android apps. 
Netskope, the leading security cloud, announces the continued expansion of the Netskope NewEdge network across the Asia-Pacific region. Upgrades in Singapore and Australia have already been completed with additional data centers now coming online for new and expanded coverage in Australia, New Zealand, and The Philippines,with more data centers planned for deployment later this year to expand service in China. Netskope's strong presence in Asia-Pacific continues to grow as it addresses remote offices and branch needs for some of the world's largest F100 businesses, as well as locally-headquartered firms like Yamaha in Japan, Virtual Gaming Worlds in Australia, and Ather in India.  

Buy now, pay later startup Affirm is looking to acquisitions to gain an edge over its competitors.Affirm announced that it intends to acquire Returnly, a software startup that helps retailers manage returns, for $300 million in cash and equity. The acquisition gives more insight into exactly how Affirm — and some of its other competitors — are mapping out their strategies for what else they can offer retailers, beyond just a digital form of layaway.Online legal service Rocket Lawyer has raised $223 million of financing from an investor group led by Vista Credit Partners to further its international expansion and make acquisitions in a fragmented market.
The company, which has 25 million registered users, already offers online legal documents and virtual attorney meetings to businesses and individuals in the U.S., U.K. and parts of Europe. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has resigned from VMware’s board of directors, effective immediately, two months after leaving the top leadership post at the virtualization giant to lead the chipmaker.Palo Alto, based VMware said in a regulatory filing Friday that Gelsinger notified the company of his resignation two days prior. The company said it was Gelsinger’s “personal decision,” “given the demands of his new position as CEO of Intel.”“We are grateful for his many years of service on the Board and his tenure as CEO of VMware,” VMware said in a statement.

Cisco AppDynamics Expands Global Software-as-a-Service Offering With Five New Locations.The addition of five new locations across Africa, Asia, Europe and South America brings the total number of AppDynamics global SaaS locations to nine. AppDynamics offers customers the broadest scale and reach of global SaaS support of any Application Performance Monitoring and Observability companies. Global expansion further provides AppDynamics customers with increased flexibility, scale and cost efficiencies, as well as greater data residency compliance and security.Qapita raises $5 million in funding round led by MassMutual Ventures. Qapita, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup provides ESOPs and cap table management solutions to private companies.
 The Qapita funding round also saw participation of Hyderabad-based venture capital firm Endiya Partners and a clutch of angel investors.The SaaS startup plans to use the funds raised to hire engineering talent, accelerate product development and build clientele in India, Indonesia and Singapore. It currently has more than 30 employees.Ambry Hill Technologies Announced the Launch Of Their Cloud-Based ERP Software, Vista Suite.Traditionally, the process of switching from one ERP system to another included extracting data from the old system and importing it into the new system. This is often expensive, slow, and rarely produces good results.Ambry Hill’s alternative to this approach is to connect to the old dataset and integrate that information into the screens of Vista Suite so that it appears to be part of the system. ALTARA Ventures, a Singapore-based venture firm helmed by Koh Boon Hwee and investment veterans, joined the US$12.6 million Series A fundraise for US software startup FreeAgent. The round was led by Pelion Venture Partners and also joined by existing investor BlueRun Ventures.
With the funding, FreeAgent intends to deepen product development and ramp up go-to-market activities