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American investment firm, Tiger Global Management, which focuses on public and private companies in industries such as software consumer and fintech, is reported to be in talks with Classplus, an Indian Edtech startup, as per an Entracker report.The investment in Classplus will range between $20 million to $25 million and could potentially push Classplus’s valuation to over $200 million. It will mark the fourth investment of Tiger Global in an Indian edtech company, after BYJUS, Unacademy and Vedantu, sources told Entracker, stating that both companies have been in talks for several weeks and that the outline of the transaction has been finalized.

Kale Logistics, a logistics tech startup, has said that it has raised $5 million in a Series A funding round led by Inflexor Ventures. Existing investors also attended the funding round. The funds will be used to strengthen the company’s goods and increase its global reach. Kale Logistics’ cloud-native integrated platform and ERP solutions for all logistics stakeholders aim to reduce the challenges that come with cargo logistics processing.

HB NEXT Corporation teams up with Vacmobile, a healthcare SaaS and enterprise software solution providing digital access to the storage of vaccination and COVID-19 tests. The move shall enhance HB NEXT’s own healthcare management solution, Clear2, by simplifying and mitigating risks in assisting enterprises to tackle COVID-19

Chqbook.com is a small business marketplace that provides loans, credit cards, insurance, accounts, and incentives to small business owners, raises $1 million in a funding round from InnoVen Capital. The new funds will be utilized to enhance the company’s lending portfolio. According to the firm, Chqbook intends to raise $30 million in debt over the next two years to extend its loan book.

Talent intelligence platform provider Eightfold AI, which helps enterprises recruit the right talent, has raised $200M in Series E round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. With this round, its total funding goes over $400M, and valuation shoots up over two times since it achieved a $1B valuation and unicorn tag during its Series D funding last October.

Time is Ltd, a SaaS provider for improving workplace productivity and collaboration within teams, has raised $5.6M in a late seed funding round led by Mike Chalfen and others. Ulf Zetterberg will now join the startup as president and co-founder. 

SurveyMonkey is rebranding itself as Momentive, an agile experience management company. Momentive will allow decision-makers to respond with speed and agility by using SurveyMonkey’s experience. IBM, KLM, LG Electronics, Nasdaq, and PUMA are among the company’s 8,800 enterprise customers. The company’s wholly-owned subsidiary, SurveyMonkeys Inc., will begin operating under the name Momentive Inc. in 2021.

PostHog, an open-source product analytics provider, has raised $15 million in a Series B round from Y Combinator’s Continuity Fund and GV, Google’s venture capital division. The firm said that the funds would be used to meet increased demand for its product, with ambitions to quadruple its personnel by the end of this year and then again by 2022.

Osome, a digital business assistant, has raised $16 million in a Series A funding round. Target Global, AltaIR Capital, and Phystech Ventures were among the returning investors; new investors include S16VC and venture capitalist Peng T. Ong, who joined as an angel investor. Its Series A will be utilized to expand internationally and integrate products. 

Yousign, a provider of electronic signatures, has secured $36.6 million (€30 million) in a Series A fundraising round headed by Lead Edge Capital. Yousign intends to compete in Europe with DocuSign, Adobe Sign, SignNow, and HelloSign, all located in the United States. In 2020, the business grew from 35 to 120 employees.

Balderton Capital, the European VC firm, has launched its dedicated growth fund of $680M to help tech companies emerging out of Europe. The launch comes amid its predictions of $50 billion growth potential in Europe over the next three years. It will invest in about 15 companies, both in primary and secondary investments, ranging between $25 to $50 million in each. 

Recorded Future, a threat intelligence organization, is launching a $20 million Intelligence Fund. Startups who have already obtained venture capital investment will be eligible for seed and Series A investment from the fund. Insight Partners, a private equity fund, bought Recorded Future in 2019 for $780 million.

TestBox, the startup which helps enterprises solve software buying problems by aiding in decision-making through its product, has launched its product today, raising a $2.7M seed fund from SignalFire, Firstminute Capital.

Seven Seven Six, a venture capital firm, has announced that it has raised $150 million for its first fund, said its founder Alexis Ohanian. Seven Seven Six has equity and inclusivity in its DNA. Women make up half of the firm’s limited partners, while Black or indigenous people make up 15%. One distinguishing feature of Seven Seven Six is introducing a 2% “Growth and Caregiving Commitment.”

Slintel, a buyer intelligence platform, has netted $20M in a Series A investment led by GGV Capital amid a rapidly increasing digital transaction in B2B businesses. Slintel’s tools, with the help of data, helps businesses understand buyer intelligence. It aims to emerge as a leader in this market.

Fuel Ventures has announced an early-stage VC fund to invest in 60 tech companies in the UK, having high-growth potential, in the next 12 months. Since its founding in the UK, Fuel Ventures has focused on technology companies, marketplaces, SaaS startups, and platforms, identifying investments in seed and growth stages.

ZoomInfo, a market intelligence company, has acquired Insent, a conversational platform provider for businesses, in an undisclosed deal.With the acquisition of Insent, companies, ZoomInfo’s clients, will use the chat at a large scale.

Marqeta, a payments service company, has gained a market capitalization of over $17.2 billion on its debut. This is due to the company’s share rise of more than 20%. Marqeta’s clients include Uber Technologies and DoorDash, Inc. The shares of the financial technology firm started at $32.50, up from its initial public offering (IPO) price of $27 per share. 

Genasys Inc. has acquired Zonehaven. First responders, public safety organizations, and communities can use Zonehaven’s planning, training, and resources to handle evacuations and repopulations successfully. Zonehaven’s services are trusted by more than 170 fire districts, 140 law enforcement agencies, and 200 communities.

Zenoti is an all-in-one cloud-based platform for salons, spas, and medi-spas founded in 2010 by Sudheer Koneru and Dheeraj Koneru has raised an additional $80 million in its Series D round. This additional funding was led by TPG, a global alternative asset fund. Appointment scheduling, online booking, billing, built-in marketing, inventory management, CRM, and loyalty functions are included. 

ChartHop, an organization management platform that builds the data-driven status of a company to help them design their future, has announced its raise of $35 million in a Series B funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Elad Gil, Cowboy Ventures, and SemperVirens had participated in the round. ChartHop will use the proceeds from the investment to accelerate its roadmap, build and improve its existing features, and in growing its team.

Vancouver, Canada-based Commit, which works with remote-first startups, connecting engineers to founders, has raised its first round of funding worth $6 million in a seed round led by Accomplice, with participation from Kensington Capital Partners, Inovia, and Garage Capital. 

BukuWarung, an Indonesian fintech focused on digitizing business for MSME merchants, has raised its Series A funding worth $60M. The proceeds shall be used to double the workforce, improve payment infrastructure. The total funding for the startup now crosses over $80M, and before Series A, in February this year, BukuWarung had raised $20M from rocketship.vc

Unified experience management (UXM) software solutions provider 1E has announced that global investment firm Carlyle Group has acquired a majority stake in it in a deal that reportedly values the company at $270 million. Other financial details of the transaction were not disclosed by either of the companies. According to Carlyle’s press release, Sumir Karayi, founder and CEO of 1E, will retain a significant minority stake in the company now and shall remain the CEO. Most of 1E’s senior management staff will be retained, while Cormac Whelan will be appointed as the chairman. Employees will own a portion of the business and share in the company’s future growth.

Sinch, a Swedish cloud communications company, has acquired MessageMedia, a messaging service provider for businesses, for $1.3 billion. The $1.3 billion transaction comprises $1.1 billion in cash and the remaining in shares. The transaction would be completed in this year’s second half. 

Pennylane, a full-stack financial management platform, has raised $18.3 million in a funding round led by Sequoia Capital.The company has been working on an accounting platform that would benefit both clients and their accountants. The organization, which focuses on small and medium businesses, has already attracted hundreds of clients.

Contentstack, a headless content management system provider, has raised $57.5 million in a Series B round led by Insight Partners. Other participants include new investor Georgian and existing investors Illuminate Ventures and GingerBread Capital. With this round, the company’s total has gone up to $89 million.The new fund will be used to accelerate the company’s investments in this technology, drive its worldwide expansion, and extend its partner network.

Cash flow problems that stem from the payments cycle of an organization continues to be a major problem for businesses today, Jesse Ghansah, co-founder and CEO of Float, said in an interview with TechCrunch. Float solves the problem with its credit solution. Originally named Swipe, Float aims to tackle cash flow problems for small and medium-sized businesses in the African region. According to Mr. Ghansah, cash flow problems occur, typically after the product is serviced, when businesses have to wait for 30-90 days to receive payments for service. This causes them to fall behind in meeting their own expenses.

Aserto, a cloud-native authorization service that provides enterprise-ready permissions for SaaS applications, has raised $5.1 million in its first seed round funding led by Costanoa Ventures and Heavybit Industries. Aserto creates a sophisticated service for developers, giving them fine-grained control over roles access control based on policies that it calls “policy-as-code approach to authoring, editing, storing, versioning, building, deploying and managing authorization rule”. 

Digital adoption SaaS platform Whatfix has closed $90 million in Series D funding from Tokyo-based SoftBank Vision Fund II, nearly two months after talks of this probable fundraising surfaced online. With the close of Series D, Whatfix’s total funding stands at $139.8 million, raised in nine investment rounds, as per Crunchbase, and its valuation has tripled in the last 15 months as per its statements. Other investors – Eight Roads Ventures, Sequoia Capital India, Dragoneer Investment Group, F-Prime Capital, and Cisco Investments- had participated in this round.

Heavy construction logistics platform Trux, which builds tech solutions for construction companies, has unveiled its new subscription-based SaaS offering to provide a more flexible and reliable logistics solution in the construction industry. Bart Ronan, CEO of Trux, in the company’s statement to the press, explained that the easy-to-use SaaS platform has been updated with features to efficiently take into account the way workers operate in the field, in the office, and behind the wheel. With the platform’s help, Trux aims to help its customers working in silos by helping their workers stay connected while handling their respective operations, thereby adding accountability and visibility into the workflow.

Sydney’s Cirralto Limited, which supplies B2B payment services for industries, has recently merged with its long-term licensing partner, Appstablishment, the Perth-based software developer, to provide optimized business and payment solutions to the global market, reports state. Cirralto revealed that with the merger, that will trade under the name of Cirrato Limited, it would also gain access to Appstablishment’s ‘Spenda business solutions,’- its flagship product that provides software to support points of sale, inventory management, debt collection, payment services, e-commerce, and catalog sharing.

Airbase, a corporate spend startup, has announced that it has raised $60 million in a Series B funding round led by Menlo Ventures. Other investors include new investor Craft Ventures, existing investors Bain Capital Ventures, First Round Capital, Quiet Capital, Webb Investment Network, and BoxGroup. The additional funds will be used to solidify Airbase’s position as the most comprehensive spend management solution in its class, as well as to drive product improvements and innovation that will continue to define the category, transform the way businesses spend money and elevate employees’ roles to focus on the value-added work that makes businesses successful.

ExtraHop, a cloud-native network detection and response company, has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Bain Capital and Crosspoint Capital. The deal is strategically valued at $900 million.Bain Capital is a technology investor and one of the multi-asset alternative investment firms in the world. Crosspoint Capital is a private equity firm specializing in cybersecurity, privacy, and infrastructure software.    

Brinqa, a Cyber Risk Management company, has announced that it has secured $110 million as growth capital from Insight Partners, global venture capital and private equity firm. Brinqa, which has been bootstrapped and founder-backed since 2009, has received its first institutional investment to help it scale its company and expand its market. As a result of this new funding, Brinqa will be better positioned to meet the growing need for flawlessly integrated, highly automated, and risk-based cybersecurity products.

Deloitte, an audit, consulting, tax, and advisory services provider, has announced that it has acquired CloudQuest Inc., a cloud security posture management (CSPM) provider, for an undisclosed sum. Deloitte’s existing cloud cybersecurity products will be bolstered by CloudQuest’s cloud-native security capabilities, allowing them to manage security workflows more easily, minimize risk, and increase data protection.

Fintech company Nubank has announced a $750 million extension to its Series G fundraising, the last round of which closed in January with a $400 million funding. In two press releases, Nubank has announced the extension of its Series G funding, which now has touched $1.5 billion. The first extension of $500 million was raised from Berkshire Hathaway, and the second extension worth $250 million, was led by Sands Capital and witnessed participation from other Brazilian investors – Absoluto Partners, asset manager co-founded by José Zitelmann and Gustavo Hungria, and Verde Asset Management, the manager led by Luis Stuhlberger.

Microsoft’s Windows Virtual Desktop will now be known as Azure Virtual Desktop. A set of new features will be launched to provide a flexible, virtually accessible cloud VDI platform for all end-users with different use cases. Some features include a QuickStart service and new pricing options for remote app streaming.

Mumbai-based QuickSell, a B2B mobile commerce suite platform, has raised $2M in a pre-Series A round co-led by InfoEdge Venture Fund and BEE NEXT, reports state. The proceeds raised shall be used to scale its business, expand its team, and enhance its product features. According to Deepak Bhagchandani, founder and CEO of QuickSell, when a product evokes solid and positive emotions from people, it grows in popularity, which has led the QuickSell team to set up a global customer base in over a hundred countries without the need to spend on marketing its product.

Bengaluru-based payments and banking technology company Cashfree has announced its new investor, State Bank of India (SBI), who has invested an undisclosed amount in Cashfree on Monday. The investment reinforces their shared vision of promoting digital modes of payments, Cashfree’s statement to the press read. The proceeds would be utilized on Cashfree’s growth strategy to improve customer experience and product innovation. As per Crunchbase, Cashfree has raised $40.9M so far, and the latest funding comes from SBI in a debt financing round (financial details undisclosed). Preceding it is the $35.3M Series B funding raised from Apis Partners.

Trulioo, a Canada-based online verification company, has announced that it has raised $394 million in a Series D funding round led by TVC, a venture capital firm. With its valuation reaching $1.75 billion, the company turns unicorn. Other participants in the round include existing investors Amex Ventures, Citi Ventures, Blumberg Capital, and Mouro Capital. The massive funding round comes as the epidemic has spurred business digitalization, and e-commerce and banking institutions want new ways to authenticate consumers’ identities to conduct secure transactions.

Lightspeed, a provider of point-of-sale and eCommerce solutions for shops and restaurateurs, has announced its intention to purchase Shopify rival Ecwid and NuORDER. The acquisition occurs when every company in the world is attempting to transition to the internet sphere and establish a digital presence. Clients of Lightspeed will get access to more digital economy entry points, unrivaled supply chain management, and more capacity to build extraordinary online consumer experiences. 

Teemyco, a virtual office service located in Stockholm, has secured $3.2 million in a fundraising round headed by 42CAP. Teemyco intends to use the capital to expand its personnel, focus on new product development, and expand its sales and marketing efforts. Upstreet, Hack your Closet, eHealthApp, Greenely, and Mr. Lee’s noodles are among its clients.

London’s Vault Platform netted $8.2M in Series A funding led by Google’s Gradient Ventures. Vault Platform provides SaaS tools to enterprises to report workplace misconduct incidents and assist them in proactively maintaining internal ethics and integrity issues. In an interview with TechCrunch, Neta Meidav, co-founder and CEO of Vault Platform, revealed that Gradient Ventures had expressed interest in the potential of applying AI to strengthen Vault’s SaaS-based misconduct reporting tool. The proceeds shall be used to expand its team, enhance its platform’s features.

Sharpen Technologies, a player in the contact center as a service, had closed its growth financing round, netting $14M from Bridge Bank, Multiplier Capital, and other investors. Mr.Gildea stated that raising funding from investment partners such as Bridge Bank and Multiplier Capital showed their vote of confidence in Sharpen’s business model. The proceeds will be used in all its departments, owing to Sharpen’ rapid growth.

The United Kingdom government has announced that it is partnering with IBM for a five-year, £210 million ($ 297.5 million) collaboration. It’s a quantum computing and artificial intelligence partnership founded to produce breakthrough discoveries and build sustainable solutions in disciplines spanning life sciences to manufacturing. There will be 60 scientists working on the project, as well as interns and students. The HNCDI program will support a variety of industry projects. The initiative is part of the company’s Discovery Accelerator initiative, which aims to accelerate discovery and innovation via the convergence of advanced technologies.

GoodData launches its enterprise edition of its headless Business Intelligence service, called GoodData CN Production. The platform is based on a microservices design that is accessed using application programming interfaces. Enterprises can give scalable, real-time data to everyone inside a company and their consumers with GoodData CN Production. 

Outreach, a sales engagement platform, has secured $200 million in a Series G fundraising round. The company’s valuation has increased to $4.4 billion due to this financing, making it a Unicorn. The fund will be used to grow Outreach’s sales and marketing teams and invest in creating, acquiring, and delivering new innovative technologies. In the previous year, Outreach has grown to over 800 employees worldwide, and it has launched two new global offices in London and Prague.

Kochi-based Abdul Salah and Muhammed Migdad noticed that most restaurants use four to five applications to manage their delivery operations. Lasper Technologies released Foaps in April 2021. With services in Kochi, Calicut, and Trivandrum, the company now takes orders from Zomato, Swiggy, Foodpanda, Amazon Restaurant, and Dunzo. Foaps claims to have processed 300,000 orders since its inception.

New Delhi-based Holisol Logistics, a supply chain logistics company providing end-to-end (E2E) supply chain management solutions, has announced its raise of $3M in a debt financing round led by Northern Arc Capital. From what started as a supply chain management consulting firm, today, Holisol provides E2E solutions due to customer demands for supply chain logistics. The proceeds shall be used for the company’s growth and to increase demand.

Gong, the revenue intelligence leader, leveraging artificial intelligence to transform revenue teams, has raised $250 million in Series E funding.  The round was led by Franklin Templeton, bringing Gong's total funding to $584 million.

LeoLabs raises $65M Series B, for its satellite monitoring and collision detection service. The round was jointly led by Insight Partners, and Velvet Sea Ventures. This latest round brings the company’s total funding to more than $100 million. With the recent funds, the company is looking to expand the number of radar sites around the world, and scale its software-as-a-service business.

 Twitter launches its new subscription service, Twitter Blue, in Australia, and Canada. The paid-for extra service will add features such as an undo tweet button, bookmarks, and a reader mode. The limited launch is designed to gain a deeper understanding of what customers are looking for. The company also said the free-to-use version of the platform would also remain. It will cost $3.49 Canadian, and $4.49 Australian per month.

 Google selects 30 start ups, to receive a share of its $2 million Black Founders Fund in Europe. Google provides these companies with a spot of cash, some valuable cloud services and a bit of good old-fashioned networking among the Google crew. The fund was announced last fall, as part of a company-wide effort toward building a more equitable future for everyone, alongside grants and new sponsorships. Each company will receive up to $100,000, in non-dilutive funding, and up to $120,000 in Ads grants, and $100,000 in Cloud credits. 

 Blackstone acquires tech publisher IDG for $1.3B, as private equity strikes again. With IDG, Blackstone gets tech analyst firm, IDC along with a collection of tech publications that includes CIO, Computerworld, InfoWorld, Macworld, Network World, PC World, and Tech Hive. The company has also been making some additions to the platform more recently, with a stronger focus on data and analytics. 

Exabeam, a late-stage startup that helps organizations detect advanced cybersecurity threats, has landed a new $200 million funding round, that values the company at $2.4 billion. The Series F growth round was led by the Owl Rock division of Blue Owl Capital. Exabeam, which has now raised $390 million in six rounds of outside funding, says it expects to use the new money to fuel scale, innovate, and extend the company’s leadership. The company adds that it has made significant investments in its partner program over the last 12 months, which now includes more than 400 reseller, distributor, systems integrator, MSSP, MDR, and consulting partners globally.