Augment

Tiger Global goes super aggressive with Investments in India. The Early backer of Flipkart and Ola, Tiger Global is close to concluding over two dozen deals in India this year alone. The New York-headquartered firm, has recently closed a $6.7 billion fund. They last week led investments in social network ShareChat, business messaging platform Gupshup, and investment app Groww, and participated in fintech app CRED’s round, helping all of these startups attain the much sought after unicorn status.
Microsoft Corp. is in advanced talks to buy artificial intelligence and speech technology company Nuance Communications Inc. The price being discussed could value Nuance at about $56 a share. This would give Nuance an equity value of about $16 billion.
Google has confirmed that it’s ending support for the Google Shopping apps on Android and iOS. The focus is now more on Google web shopping. It comes as Google has been expanding shopping functionality in Search, Image Search, and YouTube, while increasingly leveraging augmented reality. This change lets Google conserve engineering resources.
Clubhouse data has been leaked, days after scraped data from more than a billion Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, was put for sale online. The upstart platform seems to have experienced the same fate, with an SQL database containing 1.3 million scraped Clubhouse user records leaked for free on a popular hacker forum. Clubhouse has responded saying they have not experienced a breach of their systems and said that the data is already publicly available and that it can be accessed via their API which raises some questions about the privacy stance of the company allowing for anyone to gather even public profile information on a mass scale. 

Vi Business forays into integrated IoT, plans expansion of cloud services. The announcement from Vodafone Idea comes a day after Bharti Airtel announced the launch of Airtel IoT - an end-to-end platform with the capability to connect and manage billions of devices and applications. There are three specific fields Vi will be getting into. One IoT and integrated space. Second one is on collaboration which includes a host of SaaS and third will be cloud services. From being a traditional connectivity player, they will be connectivity plus collaboration plus IoT and integrated IoT and a cloud platform, said Kishore, chief enterprise business officer, Vi Business
Coupa Announces Strategic Partnership with Japan Cloud to Establish Coupa K.K. This joint venture will enable Coupa to scale to support the growing number of Japanese companies looking to gain greater efficiency and agility through Business Spend Management. Japan Cloud has a demonstrated track record of scaling U.S. enterprise software companies in the Japanese market, including Salesforce, Marketo, and most recently New Relic, BlackLine, WalkMe, nCino, and Braze.
IBM drives innovation with new Cloud for Financial Services. With the general availability of IBM Cloud for Financial Services, the financial services industry, including technology partners, can now build applications with Red Hat OpenShift, migrate virtual machine workloads, and establish compliance profiles across their workloads to help support their continuous compliance needs. Financial services institutions can now accelerate their cloud journeys with IBM Cloud for Financial Services' built-in security and compliance controls for both cloud-native and VMware workload.

Speciale Invest announces first close of second fund at ₹140 crore. Through the new fund raise, Speciale Invest expects to invest in about 18-20 startups in the space of enterprise software products, developers tools and frontier technologies
No-code publishing platform Shorthand raises $8M. Shorthand allows publishers and brands to create multimedia stories. The raise was led by Fortitude Investment Partners. The company also says that demand has only increased during the pandemic, with usage quadrupling in the fourth quarter of 2020 and subscription revenue up 8.8% month-over-month in February of this year.
Cleo Capital raises 20 million for its second fund. A recent SEC filing shows that Cleo Capital has already raised $6.7 million of that goal, bringing total assets under management to around $10 million. Like many firms, Cleo Capital has turned to creative measures to diversify deal flow in the era of Zoom investing and pandemic business. For example, Cleo Capital launched a fellowship program for laid-off workers during COVID-19 to promote entrepreneurship
FE International, Inc., the global market leader in mid-market technology mergers and acquisitions (M&A), announces the acquisition of Txt2Give, the first-of-its-kind mobile donation platform, by LTV SaaS Growth VII, LLC (LTV Fund).

A SaaS platform company in the Solar Power Industry, Prescinto, has raised $3.5M in seed funding. Prescinto is looking at revolutionizing the solar power industry by improving efficiency of solar plants using AI and Machine Learning driven platforms that will help Solar Plants identify their root issues for underperformance. The Funding round was led by Inflection Point Ventures along with Venture Catalysts, Mumbai Angels and Lets Venture. This infusion of finances will help realize Prescinto’s goals of improving Solar Power plants globally.

UK based Home Care SaaS company that uses Machine learning has raised £4.5 million pre-Series A funding. The funding round organized by West Hill Capital was 50% oversubscribed. The funds will be used to roll out Machine Learning enabled care solutions for those in independent living conditions to help in efficiency of care given.

As one of the most happening occurrences currently in the world, NFT marketplaces are exploding in popularity as collectors wade into the trading of nonfungible tokens on the blockchain. OpenSea, a startup in the field that was launched in 2017, has announced that it has bagged its latest funding round of $23M led by Andreessen Horowitz along with participation from other angels and firms including Naval Ravikant, Mark Cuban, Alexis Ohanian, Dylan Field and Linda Xie.

Slapdash, is seeking to increase performance in the workplace by aiming to carve out a new niche for itself among workplace software tools. Sources say that slapdash has raised $3.7 million in seed funding from investors that include S28 Capital, Quiet Capital, Quarry Ventures, UP2398 and Twenty Two Ventures. Angels participating in the round include co-founders at companies like Patreon, Docker and Zynga.

Kuda Technologies, has just announced that it has received $25M in Series A funds.
The round was led by Peter Theil’s, Valar Ventures, along with Target Global and other unnamed investors. Valar, a company that has invested in a number of fintech startups, is funding an African Startup for the first time. Kuda had raised a seed round of $10M led by Target Global just four months ago and is estimated to be the largest ever seed round raised by a startup out of Africa. Kuda’s CEO, Ogundeyi said in an interview that they plan to use the new funds to continue expanding its credit offerings, and add more integrations as well as move into other markets.

Fortify raises $20 M in Series B funding towards its composite manufacturing 3D Printing. Other companies in the field including Markforged, Desktop Metal and new-comer Mantel have all made big announcements recently. Now Fortify is making the round with a significant raise of a $20 million dollar Series B equity round. This round was led by Cota Capital with participation from Accel Partners, Neotribe Ventures and Prelude Ventures.

Founded in 2018, Fort Robotics today announced a $13 million raise. Led by Prime Movers Lab, the round also features Prologis Ventures, Quiet Capital, Lemnos Labs, Creative Ventures, Ahoy Capital, Compound, FundersClub and Mark Cuban.

Airtable has bagged its Series E funding to push it’s valuation to $5.77B. Airtable, with more than 200,000 organisational customers is a no-code relational database that has announced the close of $270 million in Series E funding. This funding round has doubled the valuation of the company from its last round in September 2020 when it raised $185 million in Series D funding. This latest funding amount means that Airtable has raised approximately $617 million since inception. This latest round was led by Greenoaks Capital, with participation from WndrCo, as well as existing investors Caffeinated Capital, CRV and Thrive. The company says it plans to use the funding to accelerate the development of its enterprise product and growing the team. 

Dubai-based company Grubtech has raised $3.4 million in pre-Series A funding for its software platform that helps ghost kitchens and delivery-only restaurants. The investors are yet to be confirmed, however, a large regional family and a US Based Venture capital firm along with Investors seem to be most likely to match. They are looking to use the new funding to expand across the MENA region as well as Europe and the Americas. They are also looking to use the funding to develop their product. Built specifically for cloud kitchen operations or restaurants that are multi-brand but operate from a single kitchen, the epidemic has forced many to adopt Grub-Tech, as the majority of sales moved from over the counter to delivery or pickup orders.

iCrowdNewswire powered by Google launched a fully reworked and revamped SaaS platform including industry leading vertical newswires for Legal, Real Estate, Research Marketing, Content Marketing, and general press release distribution. Since shaking hands with Google in 2017, icrowdnewswire has become the prominent press release distribution tech company focusing on paid advertising distribution from a Geographic perspective.  

Signiant Inc. today announced the acquisition of the German company Lesspain Software, the  provider of Kyno the desktop application and embedded media processing software.  Signiant looks forward to tapping into Lesspain’s talent and technology, which would be used to extend Signiant’s Software Defined Content Exchange SaaS Platform, commonly known as SDCX. The software connects more than 50,000 media and Entertainment companies across the globe in varying sizes.

The startup, UpCodes, which develops building-code compliance tools, has announced today that it has raised pre-series A funding, totaling $3.36 million dollars. The company has now raised $4.15 million as funding since its inception. Having started their journey in 2016, they took part in Y Combinator’s accelerator program in 2017. This new round was led by Point Nine Capital, a Berlin-based company that primarily invests in online marketplaces and SaaS products. Other investors include the co-founder Ryan Sutton-Fee, Ralph Gootee, Tracy Young, and Kenny Stone; Bragiel Brothers; Capital X; Flex Capital and liquid 2 Ventures. 

Indian based Tata Consultancy Services or also known as TCS has announced the launch of it’s SaaS-based automatic suite of security services for cognitive threat management, identity and access management, governance, risk and compliance, data privacy and protection, digital forensics, and incident response. Board-level executives, as well as C-suite’s, can get real-time insights to review and fine-tune their risk strategies.

Otarkie, a Zimbabwean startup has launched a SaaS platform focusing on retailers seeking omni-channel ways to sell online. Otarkie, aim’s to support potential customers and headless e-commerce to launch and manage their own retail operations across multiple sales channels with a singular back end office. Customers can pick and integrate modules based on their requirements as well, which helps them integrate and transition into the platform smoothly. Otarkie is looking to address a gap in the market where payment gateways and solutions are not catered to the local market, which is Southern Africa. The company looks to expand its operations into neighbouring Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zambia.

SaaS Alerts, a company that was started in 2020 has raised $1.2 million in early stage seed funding. The company’s CEO mentioned that they wanted to reach out and get investors from the MSP software and IT services industry that they have succeeded in. The investor line up includes Gary Pica a former owner, David Bellini the co-founder of ConnectOn, Adam Slutskin the CRO at Liongard, Paul Cissel former CEO of Internet & Telephone, Pete Peterson CEO of Merit Solutions, Kevin Lancaster Executive VP of Kaseya, Paul Brady CEO of Gtms, John Barrows CEO of JBarrows Sales training and Michael France, Managing Partner at Taylor Business Group. The funding arrives at a key time for SaaS Alerts and the MSP software industry as a whole. 

VERB Technology Company, Inc. today announced that CEO Rory Cutaia is presenting at the Emerging Growth Conference on Wednesday, March 17, to a live, online audience. VERB, a rapidly emerging market leader in business-focused interactive video sales and marketing tools, including livestream ecommerce, CRM, and content management applications makes software-as-a-service (SaaS) products that are cloud-based, accessible on all mobile and desktop devices, and are available by subscription for individual and enterprise users. Rory’s presentation will highlight the Company’s SaaS sales enablement solutions and its interactive video technology. 

Stripe is looking to use the funds to expand their European business and focus on their European HeadQuarters. It is looking to bolster its treasury network and global payments as well. The funding round was backed by the likes of Allianz X fund, Axa, both from the insurance world as well as Baillie Gifford, Fidelity, Sequoia and Investors from Ireland, namely Ireland's National Treasury Management Agency.
ESB, an Indonesian based company has just raised US$3 million in a series A funding. This funding round was led by Beenext, AC Ventures and Skystar Capital. ESB is looking to use part of its latest round of funding to onboard suppliers for their B2B supply chain. During the Lockdown of last year, ESB launched a delivery platform that helped companies offer contactless dining and deliver independently. They completely outmatched their competition by competitively pricing their offering. The platform became the buzz when it onboarded 20 Million annual orders for customers within just 6 months.

Credit Suisse reports that India has 100 startup unicorns and not just the often mentioned number of 30-35. The report states that over 60% of these companies were started after 2005. These unicorns cover various sectors however, SaaS companies though classified as non-conventional companies, are ranked as some of the fastest growing industries in the country. 

Indian Startups seems to have taken the lead in the most number of companies funded, with a total of 19 startups that have raised funding. Many of these are SaaS companies. 196 Million dollars was pushed to 16 of the 19 companies. Of these companies, Icertis raked in approximately $80 Million followed by Ecom Express at about $40 Million Dollars. Other companies that were funded include Quizizz, Riskcovry, Awfis and Nordwin to name but a few. The complete list of companies will be shared in our post on Linkedin. Of the 19 companies funded, 3 companies are yet to disclose the amounts.

Israeli company, Optibus picks up $107M for an AI-based planning and operations platform aimed at the mass transportation sector. Mass transportation is an essential part of how metropolitan areas are kept moving and connected. Optibus is a platform that helps to analyze how vehicles and people move in and around cities so as to provide scheduling, navigation and driver rostering towards mass transportation providers. The company has raised $107M as Series C funding and it looks to expand its solutions and services with the infusion of the funds. Though the valuation of the company has not been announced yet, it is estimated that Optibus is valued at nearly $500 Million dollars after this round of funding which boosts it by nearly 4 times its previous valuation and round from 2018. 

Valor Ventures Fund 2 has announced a $1.75 million Series Seed funding of Allelica, Inc. Valor General Partner Gary Peat joins the Allelica board of directors. The round, led by Valor Ventures also had Pi Campus, an AI-focused venture fund and Medical Genetics Center (MGZ), a prestigious genetics research institution, as strategic investors.

SailPoint Technologies has announced that it is going to acquire ERP Maestro, a SaaS Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) Solution. SailPoint is looking to use ERP Maestro’s flexible agile approach to automate and ensure robust monitoring for an organisations’ most complex business critical systems. With ERP Maestro, the company will unite identity security with ERP Maestro’s Separation-of-Duty controls monitoring for an organization’s most critical applications, like SAP.

Privacera has recently announced a successful funding round. They raised $50 million in a Series B funding round where Insight Partners led the funding round. In May of last year, the solution provider had already raised Series A funding round for $13.5 million. The latest investment was led by Insight Partners, Sapphire Ventures, Battery Ventures, and earlier investors.

According to Gartner’s forecasts, SaaS revenues are set to grow from $121 billion in 2021 to $141 billion in 2022. The SaaS economy has been steadily growing with more companies offering their products or services under the software-as-a-service model. The one issue that SaaS companies face is getting better qualified Leads in an uphill battle to ensure they can onboard as many clients as possible in the shortest time, thus keeping costs to a minimum. The latest trend shows organizations turning to AI to automate these processes that would usually take us a longer period to attend so that time to customer acquisition is reduced significantly. AI helps them not only speed up their process, but also helps filter and qualify leads so that the sales team works at a higher efficiency.

SaaS startup Icertis raises $80 million in Series F funding; valuation triples to $2.8 billion. This year's funding was led by existing investor B Capital Group, with participation from Greycroft, Meritech Capital Partners, Premji Invest, PSP Growth, and e.ventures. The company will use this funding to invest in accelerating its AI and Blockchain development, expanding its sales and marketing footprint, and building out its global partner network. It also has plans to expand across Japan, South East Asia, and northern Europe. The funding round makes Icertis the second most valuable SaaS unicorn in the Indian startup circuit after Freshworks, which was valued at $3.5 billion in their last funding round in 2020.

Pipe Raises $50 Million Through Latest Investment Round Led By Raptor Group & Siemens Next47Pipe stated it gives SaaS companies access to the full annual value of their subscriptions, upfront. Since launching its SaaS financing platform in February 2020, Pipe claims it has seen overwhelming demand from early and growth-stage SaaS companies. Speaking about the platform, Harry Hurst, Co-Founder, and Co-CEO of Pipe stated: “When we were approached by such incredible companies with aligned missions to form partnerships, the conversations quickly evolved. We felt it made sense to have the broader ecosystem that powers growth-oriented companies join forces to invest together in the future of revenue as a tradable asset class.”

Legl gets $7M to help law firms upgrade to digital workflows. B2B SaaS startup Legl has bagged $7M in Series A funding led by Octopus Ventures for its platform for law firms which offers tools to streamline core business processes such as customer onboarding, due diligence, and payments. The UK startup was founded just over a year ago by Julia Salasky, a lawyer by background, who previously founded the public interest legal crowdsourcing campaign platform, CrowdJustice. Legl says it’s now working with around 100 UK-based law firms, including around a dozen of the top 200. Series A will be used to expand Legl’s team and grow its UK user base as well as for further development of the product.