Augment

Hawke Ventures raises $5.6M to back digital marketing startups. The firm is mostly focused on products that can be used by small and medium businesses. The firm’s focus is to build a definitive platform for Conversational Commerce. Hwake is trying to build a different venture firm that does not focus on what we think the next big idea is, but is focused on building actual technology that can be used by consumers.
Introvoke raises $2.7M to power online events that can be embedded anywhere. The funding was led by Struck Capital. The startup offers components like virtual stages, chat rooms and networking hubs, all customizable and embeddable on a customer’s website. Introvoke charges customers based on live event minutes, a model that it says is accessible to companies large and small.At Basis Set Ventures, merging venture capital and software development yields a $165 million new fund. That product development is one reason the firm has managed to stay relatively lean and was two times oversubscribed when it went out to raise its second fund, a $165 million.Currently Basis Set has at least three different programs, all aimed to recruit and nurture talent that typical Bay Area firms haven’t traditionally focused on. The first is its Persistence platform, which is designed to help women developers and founders network and nurture connections and foster ideas. The firm also has a service that it calls Founder Superpowers, to help entrepreneurs identify and develop areas of strength while looking for additional tools to augment their capabilities. Another key factor for the company is trying to find a more diverse set of founders with different backgrounds from the typical Silicon Valley biography.

ActiveCampaign raises $240M at a $3B valuation as marketing and sales automation come into focus for Small and medium businesses. The round was  led by  Tiger Global, with participation from another new backer Dragoneer, along with Susquehanna Growth Equity and Silversmith Capital Partners. This funding round represents a huge leap for ActiveCampaign.

Fraud prevention platform Sift raises $50M at over $1B valuation.  Insight Partners led the financing, which included participation from Union Square Ventures and Stripes. Sift was founded out of Y Combinator in 2011, and has raised a total of $157 million over its lifetime. Sift uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to automatically surmise whether an attempted transaction or interaction with a business online is authentic or potentially problematic.

E-commerce tracking platform AfterShip raises $66M in SeriesB. This was led by Tiger Global, with participation from Hillhouse Capital’s GL Ventures. The company’s software enables sellers to track shipments made through more than 740 carriers and handles more than 6 billion shipments each year.

Podcast recording platform Riverside.fm raises $9.5M. The round is led by Seven Seven Six. Riverside.fm is a remote video and audio platform that records lossless audio and 4K video tracks remotely to each user’s system, saving the end result from the kind of technical hiccups that come with spotty internet connections. The company says it plans to use the money to increase headcount and build out more features for the service.

BigID boosts Series D to $100M at $1.25B valuation, With $30M extension. The investment comes from private equity firm Advent International, and brings the total raised to more than $200 million across four rounds. The late-stage startup is attracting all of this capital by building a security and privacy platform.

Era Software raises $15.25M for enterprise data management. EraDB officially rebranded as Era Software as part of the Series A announcement. The new round of funding was led by Playground Global and brings total funding to Era Software up to $22 million. AppOmni raises $40 million in a Series B. The round was led by Scale Venture Partners, with Salesforce Ventures and ServiceNow Ventures, as well as previous backers ClearSky, Costanoa Ventures, Inner Loop Capital and Silicon Valley Data Capital.The company today integrates with more than 100 connectors, platforms used by developers and IT teams at companies to manage the apps that their businesses use, such as tools like Splunk and Sumo Logic. Through this, AppOmni is able to aggregate and normalize event data around those apps, in addition to deeper monitoring in cases where it can integrate with apps themselves.Per Diem raises $2.3M to help local businesses build subscription programs. The round of seed funding was led by Two Sigma Ventures. The startup is currently focused on New York, but it’s already working with businesses in Phoenix and Washington, D.C. 

Enterprise software firm Chargebee raises $125 million at a valuation of $1.4 Billion, making it India's newest unicorn, signaling the funding boom underway in India and continuing the wave of software unicorns.The round was co-led by Sapphire Ventures and existing investors Tiger Global, Insight Venture Partners and Steadview Capital. This also makes Chargebee the 11th unicorn to emerge from India in just four months of 2021.Grip Security raises $6 million seed round led by cybersecurity-focused YL Ventures, with participation from CrowdStrike CEO and co-founder George Kurtz and a group of other angel investors with deep roots in the cybersecurity industry. Grip Security currently has about 15 employees and plans to use the new funding to build out its platform with additional capabilities, especially around providing access governance and data governance to applications. The plan is to grow to 20 to 25 employees within the next year.Tel Aviv’s developer of financial planning and analysis tools, DataRails raises $18.5 million in a Series A round.The round was Led by Zeev Ventures Fund along with existing investors Vertex Ventures Israel and Innovation Endeavors , alongside undisclosed private investors. To date, the company has raised $28.5 million.Cape Privacy , a startup that allows companies to share sensitive data in a secure and encrypted way raises $20 million in  Series. Evolution Equity Partners led the round with participation from new investors Tiger Global Management, Ridgeline Partners and Downing Lane. Existing investors Boldstart Ventures, Version One Ventures, Haystack, Radical Ventures and a slew of individual investors also participated. The company has now raised approximately $25 million, including a $5 million seed investment.RippleMatch, a career recruiting platform, raises $23.5M funding.The round was led by Invus Opportunities with participation from Renegade Partners and Gaingels along with existing investors G20, Work-Bench, Alleycorp, Bullpen Capital and Accomplice. The company intends to use the funds to continue building out its intelligent hiring platform.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup Whatfix is in active talks to raise $80-90 million as a part of its Series D round, led by SoftBank Vision Fund II, at a valuation of $500-550 million.The talks with US-based Whatfix come a year after the startup raised $32 million as a part of its Series C round led by Sequoia Capital India. Existing investors, including Sequoia India, are expected to participate in the round, said the people mentioned above.Druva, a data-protection startup that counts US space agency NASA and drugmaker Pfizer among its customers, has received $147 million investment as it rapidly scales in response to accelerated demand for its platform. The fundraise was led by Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), a global investment group, The round has increased the Pune and California-based company’s valuation above $2 billion. The financing round also included participation from existing investors Viking Global Investors and Atreides Management.Virdee, an Austin, Texas-based SaaS company delivering digital check-in and virtual concierge services to the hospitality and commercial real estate industries, received a strategic financing from SaaS investors, bringing total seed funding to $4M. Backers included Silverton Partners, LiveOak Venture Partners, and DJR Advisors.As online identity management grows in importance, Mastercard swooped in and bought identity verification company Ekata for $850 million. Mastercard certainly sees the rapid digital transformation that is happening in online commerce, a move that was accelerated by COVID. It’s a transformation that once started isn’t likely to change back to the old ways of doing business, even when we get past the pandemic.Atlassian today announced that it has acquired Brisbane, Australia-based ThinkTilt, the company behind the popular Jira-centric no-code/low-code form builder ProForma. The two companies did not disclose the price of the acquisition. The acquisition is meant to help strengthen Jira Service Management, Atlassian’s version of Jira that focuses on IT service management (ITSM). 

Physical security and smart buildings software, Spintly raises Rs 4.6 crore in an extended seed round of funding led by Silicon Valley-based Riso Capital, along with SucSEED Indovation Fund from Hyderabad, Chicago-based Nikhan Investments and Keiretsu Forum angel network . Spintly provides SaaS-based physical security solutions which enable smartphone-based door access eliminating the need for key cards and elaborate wiring for access control. They will utilise these funds to boost sales, marketing and research activities in order to enhance their position.C2i, a genomics SaaS product to detect traces of cancer, raises $100M Series B. Using C2i’s technology, doctors can order a liquid biopsy, which is essentially a blood draw that looks for DNA. This round of funding will be used to accelerate clinical development and commercialization of the company’s C2-Intelligence Platform. Investors that participated in the round include NFX, Duquesne Family Office, Section 32 (Singapore), iGlobe Partners and Driehaus Capital.IBM is acquiring myInvenio, a business automation software provider that specializes in process mining as part of the hyperautomation trend. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition aligns with IBM CEO Arvind Krishna’s effort to pivot the business toward multi-cloud software that drives business automation. The efforts span process mining, RPA, document processing, workflow automation and more. Those various software components integrate with IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation, and run atop Red Hat OpenShift. The OpenShift software allows IBM’s automation packages to run on any public, private cloud or hybrid cloud.

Paddle, the Revenue Delivery Platform for B2B Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies appoints software industry veteran Jimmy Fitzgerald to the position of President and Chief Operating Officer. In his new role, Fitzgerald will help Paddle with its mission to supercharge the growth of fast-scaling software businesses everywhere. Fitzgerald was COO at SaaS price optimization startup SignalDemand (acquired by PROS) and held senior leadership positions at customer relationship management (CRM) pioneer Siebel Systems (later acquired by Oracle). Caller-identification application Truecaller announces a new solution for enterprises, which will allow businesses to verify their identity on the platform. With this feature, verified businesses will get a green caller ID and a verified business badge, and can also lock their brand name and profile photo. However, consumers will continue to see the number of spam markings as usual and they retain the right to mark verified numbers as spam or block them completely. E-commerce investor Upper90 raises $55M for equity investments. Upper90 is led by CEO Billy Libby, former head of quantitative education sales at Goldman Sachs, and Chairman Jason Finger co-founder of Seamless, and it was the first investor in both Thrasio and Clearbanc. The firm offers debt and equity funding, and it just closed a $195 million fund in December. Chili Piper, a sophisticated SaaS appointment scheduling platform for sales teams, raises a $33 million B round led by Tiger Global. Existing investors Base10 Partners and Gradient Ventures, Google’s AI-focused VC, also participated. This brings the company’s total financing to $54 million. The company will use the capital raised to accelerate product development. The previous $18 million A round was led by Base10 and Google’s Gradient Ventures nine months ago. Substack announces a $1M initiative to fund local journalists. The startup described Substack Local as a $1 million initiative that will fund independent writers creating local news publications. Similar to the Substack Pro program, the company will offer cash advances of up to $100,000, as well as mentorship and subsidized access to health insurance and design services. In exchange, Substack will take 85% of subscription revenue for a year.UserZoom raises $100M and acquires EnjoyHQ, to grow its platform to improve UX and other interactive design elements. It has built a platform used by companies like Google, Microsoft, PayPal, Salesforce, and many others to help them stay off the bad design radar with tools to evaluate their design and identify where and when it doesn’t work.MedChron LLC Launches Its Innovative New SaaS for Small to Mid Size Medical Practices, Optimizing CCM, CCP, and MWV Medicare Billing. MedChron was founded to fix problems and deliver an affordable web-based software solution that quickly, efficiently, and neatly organizes all contacts and interactions with patients. 

Mowies Expands On-Demand Platform with Harmonic's VOS Cloud Streaming SaaS. Mowies expanded offering allows consumers to purchase on-demand content directly from filmmakers, musicians and storytellers. The VOS360 SaaS provides Mowies with an easy-to-use, end-to-end solution for media processing and delivery, optimizing bandwidth usage and enabling an exceptional viewing experience for viewers.
London-based multi-store, mutli-vendor e-commerce solution for global scaling platform Techsembly raises £1 million from SuperSeed Ventures and a number of undisclosed private investors.The funding is expected to be used to assemble a cross-marketing team that will initially target European and Asian markets. 
Uber Offers SaaS To Three New Public Transit Agencies. Denver’s Regional Transportation District will begin employing Uber’s management software on its fleet of wheelchair-accessible vehicles this week, with Cecil Transit and Porterville Transit following in the weeks to come. These agencies will pay a fee to use Uber’s technology. Uber made its first transit deal in June of last year, offering residents of Marin County, population 250,000, a chance to use Uber’s app to book minibus rides. The deal allowed the county transit agency to charge riders $4 per mile, with a dollar discount for every mile for travelers with disabilities or mobility issues. Uber earns a flat fee for managing the service, capped at $80,000.
Aras Announces Expansion of Subscription Offerings with Enterprise SaaS. Enterprise Edition delivers full customization capabilities in an all-inclusive SaaS format with DevOps processes specifically designed to meet the mission-critical demands of the most complex scenarios. The new subscription offer from Aras provides unmatched cloud capabilities for the largest enterprise deployments.
 Aiven, a provider of open-source software for managing cloud data infrastructure, raises $100 million from investors led by venture capital fund Atomico and would use the proceeds to expand internationally. Helsinki-based Aiven stated that the Series C funding round valued the business at more than $800 million. It was also backed by new investors Salesforce Ventures and World Innovation Lab.

Huler Launches Its Human Experience SaaS Platform, The HulerHub. HulerHub transforms the way businesses engage with their teams by introducing a people-centric and time-saving digital solution. The much-anticipated flagship SaaS offering has already registered interest from global household names within the UK, USA and Canada, following an initial $7 million dollar investment.
Flipkart Group is close to buying travel and hotel booking platform Cleartrip in a distress sale, as the Walmart-owned e-commerce giant strengthens its operations in the hospitality segment.The cash-and-stock deal valuing Cleartrip at almost $40 million may close in the next 10 days. The deal comes at a time the hospitality industry continues to reel from the onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic.
Risk and compliance startup LogicGate confirms a data breach. An unauthorized third party has obtained credentials to its Amazon Web Services-hosted cloud storage servers storing customer backup files for its flagship platform Risk Cloud, which helps companies to identify and manage their risk and compliance with data protection and security standards. LogicGate has not stated how the AWS credentials were compromised. LogicGate has not made any public statement about the breach.
Clubhouse is rapidly expanding access to payments, its first revenue-generating feature for creators, since its launch into testing earlier this month. At the beginning of April, Clubhouse said it would give a small test group of creators the ability to accept payments from their fans and supporters through the social audio app. Clubhouse this weekend rolled out payments to 60,000-plus users in the U.S.and it expects to have payments roll out to everyone over the next few weeks.
1Password acquires SecretHub and launches new enterprise secrets management tool. 1Password has not disclosed the price of the acquisition. 1Password is currently in use by more then 80,000 businesses worldwide. In addition to the acquisition  1Password has also announced a new partnership with GitHub.
Deeplite raises $6M seed to deploy ML. Deeplite, a startup based in Montreal, wants to change the way ML is provided at very high price by providing a way to reduce the overall size of the model, allowing it to run on hardware with far fewer resources.The investment was led by Boston-based venture capital firm PJC led the round, with help from Innospark Ventures, Differential Ventures and Smart Global Holdings. Somel Investments, BDC Capital and Desjardins Capital also participated.. .

Growth equity firm PSG has acquires a majority stake in Nalanda Global, a Spanish provider of supplier risk management software solutions to companies across 10 countries. The deal marks the eighth investment from PSG's Europe-focused fund, which closed on €1.25 billion in February.
Datadog Completes Acquisition of Sqreen. The acquisition will accelerate the way they build security tools that automate application protection, threat detection, and security monitoring.The closing of this deal will boost Datadog's existing APM functionality and move the company closer to providing customers with a robust, full-stack security monitoring solution for the cloud age.
NVIDIA and Global Computer Makers Launch Industry-Standard Enterprise Server Platforms for AI. NVIDIA and VMware’s collaboration provides customers an AI-ready enterprise platform to accelerate AI, container-based and traditional enterprise workloads. Among the first incorporating these systems into their data centres are Lockheed Martin and Mass General Brigham.
Commvault announces that Metallic Backup-as-a-Service solutions are now available in the UAE and wider Middle East region. The solutions include Metallic’s enterprise-grade offerings including Metallic Office 365 Backup and Recovery, Metallic Endpoint Backup and Recovery and Metallic Core Backup and Recovery. With this expanded availability, the firm claims that customers can now seamlessly address growing business concerns around cost, scalability, and security as they protect critical data.
SaaS security startup DoControl raises $10 million in Series A funding to help customers safeguard SaaS applications from Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, and others. Key financial backers include RTP Global, CrowdStrike Falcon Fund, StageOne Ventures and Cardumen Capital. DoControl is the latest in a growing list of security startups focused specifically on safeguarding SaaS applications.