SparkLabs Global Technology and Internet Market Bi-Monthly Review 0223 2015

SparkLabs Global Ventures’ Technology and Internet Market Bi-Monthly Review February 23, 2015

SparkLabs Global Ventures (http://www.sparklabsglobal.com) is a global seed-stage fund with partners in Silicon Valley, Chicago, London Tel Aviv, Singapore, and Seoul.

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Bi-monthly Highlights

Global Trends • The Payments Industry: The Trends Creating New Winners And Losers In The Card-Processing Ecosystem

The payments industry had a huge year in 2014 and it's showing no sign of slowing down. On the one hand tech giants like Amazon and Apple released new products that affirmed their long-term payments ambitions (Apple Pay and Amazon Local Register). On the other hand startups such as Stripe and ShopKeep continued to carve out market share, challenging older players like PayPal and VeriFone. Three trends will shape the payment-card-processing ecosystem from 2015 onward: the EMV security migration, rapid development of new payment technologies, and the massive card-fraud problem in the US. While none of these developments will completely upend the incumbent system for processing payments, each will disrupt key players. The mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) is going to have a massive impact on the payments-hardware and payments-software industry. By 2019, we forecast that nearly 80% of US retailers will have implemented a mPOS device. The move to mPOS will continue to put pressure on hardware providers that compete directly against mPOS devices, as well as ISOs that sell legacy devices to merchants. In addition, the ecosystem for credit- and debit-card processing involves a complicated set of players interacting to process every transaction. Five types of players are involved: acquirers/processors, issuers, card networks, gateway providers, and independent sales organizations (ISOs). To process a typical transaction, three steps must occur: authorizing, batching, and funding. Each participant in this process takes a fee off of the total volume of a transaction. The remainder is deposited in a merchant's account.

• The 'connected car' is creating a massive new business opportunity for auto, tech, and telecom companies The connected car is equipped with internet connections and software that allow people to stream music, look up movie times, be alerted of traffic and weather conditions, and even power driving-assistance services such as self-parking. By 2020, BI Intelligence estimates that 75% of cars shipped globally will be built with the necessary hardware to connect to the Internet. The connected-car market is growing at a five-year compound annual growth rate of 45% — 10 times as fast as the overall car market. We expect that 75% of the estimated 92 million cars shipped globally in 2020 will be built with internet-connection hardware. But of the 220 million total connected cars on the road globally in 2020, we estimate consumers will activate connected services in only 88 million of these vehicles. Connected-car vehicle prices are out of reach for most car buyers, but they will drop significantly in the next few years. The high average selling price of $55,000 is driven by the fact that connected-car shipments tilt toward the luxury category. In addition, connected-car technology is now split between approaches that put the Internet connection in the car and those relying on a secondary device. Embedded connections don't require a phone's data plan to operate, and consumers and carmakers gain access to a wider variety of features and data. Embedded connections will win, in part because they offer two clear advantages to carmakers. They allow auto companies to collect data on cars' performance and send updates and patches to cars remotely, avoiding recalls related to the car's software.



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Asia Pacific

China • Alibaba pushes its mobile OS with US$590M investment in phone maker Meizu

China’s ecommerce titan Alibaba announced a US$590 million investment in phone maker Meizu. It gives Alibaba a “minority” but undisclosed stake in the smartphone company. Alibaba says it and Meizu will “collaborate at both strategic and business levels” in areas such as “ecommerce, mobile internet, mobile operating system, and data analysis.” In addition, Alibaba’s Tmall and Taobao estores, which collectively have 334 million active shoppers, will play host to Meizu’s online stores. That mention of a mobile operating system refers to Alibaba’s YunOS, which first launched in 2011 on a variety of phones from third-party brands. However, Alibaba’s OS has struggled to take off as a popular alternative to Android. In October 2014, Alibaba and Meizu tied up for the first time to make a special edition of the Meizu MX4 than runs Alibaba’s OS rather than Android. That phone sells for RMB 1,799 (US$295) in China. Alibaba’s Meizu investment comes after other major Chinese web companies have aligned themselves with phone companies, such as Qihoo’s US$400 million investment in Coolpad, and Tencent’s ongoing partnership with Xiaomi. Meizu was the first Chinese startup phone maker to make international headlines in the early days of smartphones, but its star soon faded as arch-rival Xiaomi grew quickly to become a new Chinese tech giant. Meizu is now battling for attention amidst an array of upstart phone brands in China, such as Oppo and OnePlus.

• Chinese education startup 17zuoye raises US$100M series D from Lei Jun, Yuri Milner, etc. Online education is booming in China. On the eve of the Chinese new year, online education platform 17zuoye announced that it has raised a series D round worth US$100 million. This brings the company’s total valuation to US$600 million. The round was led by H Capital (which also invested in 17zuoye’s series C), and other investors included Temasek, Yuri Milner/DST, and Lei Jun’s Shunwei (which has invested in every 17zuoye round starting with its series A). 17zuoye is an online learning platform for students K-12, as well as teachers and parents. The name means “homework together” in Chinese, and the site aims to serve as a nexus for all three groups to facilitate the educational experience, focusing on English and Math classes. For example, for students one service it offers is an automated system that allows them to record English sentences and get instant feedback on pronunciation. Teachers can then listen to their students’ recordings at any time. Parents can even get real-time reports on their kids via WeChat. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Online education is a hot market in China right now, but 17zuoye, which was founded in 2007, has shown especially explosive growth. Two years ago the site had just over 1 million students; now it has more than 7 million. In July of last year alone, for example, the site added more than 130,000 students to its rolls.

• Chinese mobile laundry service Bear Butler nabs US$960K angel investment

Chinese O2O startup Bear Butler has raised US$960,000 in angel funding to continue its dry-cleaning dreams. The new cash will be used to optimize the startup’s workflow and build out a management team. Bear Butler is a mobile app and Taobao shop that allows users to book and pay for laundry service. Bear Butler takes charge of pretty much everything else: they’ll send someone to pick up the laundry at your place, wash it, and then drop it back off clean so that you can forget about the entire laundry process. Of course, that sort of service does come at a cost: RMB 9 (US$1.44) per article of clothing and an additional RMB 50 (US$8) for pickup/dropoff. Trickier items of clothing and bedding have their own prices. Bear Butler is way more expensive than a laundromat, and it wouldn’t take many loads of clothing for it to be more expensive than buying your own washing machine, too. But the service could well catch on with China’s upper-class young urbanites, who have cash to burn, a preference for trendy O2O services, and a desire for convenience even at significant extra cost.

• Shopline nets US$1.2M in funding from Ardent Capital and 500 Startups, sets sights on Southeast Asia

Shopline, the Hong Kong-based startup that offers online tools for e-commerce vendors, announced that it has closed a US$1.2 million seed funding round. Investors include 500 Startups, Ardent Capital, SXE Ventures, East Ventures, and COENT Venture Partners. Co-founder and CEO Raymond Yip says Shopline will use the funding to ramp up staffing and marketing. Once a team of three, the company has now increased its employee count to nine, and expects to get bigger as it targets expansion in Southeast Asia. Shopline is an online platform that helps e-commerce merchants sell goods directly to consumers on standalone websites, as opposed to an eBay-esque marketplace. Similar to Shopify, the Ottowa-based startup that’s reportedly valued at over US$1 billion dollars, Shopline charges vendors a monthly subscription fee of about US$16 for access to a domain name and a customizable admin panel. In addition to Shopify, Shopline faces a handful of other Asian competitors. Taiwan’s 91mai, which is founded by former team behind Yahoo Taiwan’s ecommerce channel, offers a similar product for



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ecommerce vendors, but through native apps rather than mobile websites. Uitox, another Taiwan company founded by an ecommerce veteran, lets vendors build websites free of charge and monetizes through commissions on purchases and value-added services.

• Chinese smartphone glucometer Dnurse raises millions in series A Chinese healthcare startup Dnurse announced that it has raised a round of series A funding led by SAIF Partners and Innovation works, according to Sina Tech. The exact sum of the funding was not disclosed, but it is reported to be in the “tens of millions” in RMB, which means it was likely at least US$1-2 million. Dnurse produces a smartphone-compatible glucose monitor along with monitoring app software. The small monitor plugs directly into a phone’s headphone jack, and requires just a tiny amount of blood (0.6 microliters) to function. Once the blood has been sampled, users can check out the results and track their blood sugar over time using the free Android and iOS app. The app also offers reminders so that users don’t forget to test. The investment is a timely one for SAIF and Innovation Works, as diabetes – the most common disease requiring a glucometer – has risen sharply in China over the past decade as income levels and lifestyles change. It is estimated that China now has more than 100 million diabetics, and the disease has become a full-blown public health crisis there. Most cases of diabetes are still undiagnosed, so only a fraction of those 100-million-plus diabetics are actually using glucometers, but that number is likely to rise sharply over the next five to ten years.

• Tantan, a Chinese Tinder clone, raises US$5M series A

In the wake of the Momo IPO, it seems investors are interested in the Chinese mobile dating market. The latest evidence of this: US$5M in series A funding to Tantan, a Chinese flirting/dating app, in a round led by Bertelsmann Asia Investments. Readers familiar with the Western dating app Tinder will have no trouble understanding Tantan, because it’s basically a carbon copy: you set up a profile, and then use it to browse the photos of other people in your area. If you like the photo you see, swipe right and if they like you too you’ll have a chance to chat with them. If you don’t like what you see, swipe left and move on to the next person’s photo. Of course, any social network lives or dies based on its user numbers. It’s not clear just how many users Tantan has. The iOS version of the app has just three reviews on the iTunes store, one of which complains about a lack of users. But founders Pan Ying and Wang Yu claim that the app has a weekly active user rate of 80 percent and a weekly user retention rate of between 55 and 60 percent.

Korea • Korea’s top app for finding apartments closes on US$18M funding

Zig Bang, an apartment hunting app from Korea, raised a US$18 million funding round from previous investors including Stone Bridge, Company K Partners, and others. That’s the biggest funding round for a Korean startup since food delivery app Baedal Minjeok raised US$36 million in November. Zig Bang is the primary product of Channel Breeze, which previously raised US$8.21 million from the same investors. In smartphone-savvy Korea, Zig Bang claims to make up 80 percent of the country’s real estate app market. Its growth has far outpaced Naver Real Estate, a similar app from Korea’s biggest web giant. This new round of funding will be used to ramp up marketing among other expenses. It has already invested heavily in TV commercials and public display ads. Users on Zig Bang can search for rental properties by the number of rooms, occupants, and price. Across both mobile and web versions, the startup reports 6 million users (though those aren’t all necessarily active and there might be some overlap). The goal for 2015 is to hit 10 million and potentially seek another funding round. Real estate apps are proving popular across Asia among both users and investors, from Singapore’s 99.co and PropertyGuru to Rocket Internet’s Lamudi, India’s CommonFloor, China’s Uoko and Ziroom.

• LimoTaxi Raises more than US$1M from Big Basin Capital

LimoTaxi, a mobile on-demand taxi app, announced that it raised more than US$1M from Big Basin Capital, a venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley. Altos Ventures, one of LimoTaxi’s previous investors, also participated in the investment round. The new investment will now allow the venture company to expand more rapidly into other regions beyond Seoul and to focus on service improvement. LimoTaxi was founded in July 2014 by former businessmen who had successfully introduced EasyTaxi, a Brazil-based on-demand taxi app, into Korea. After launching its beta service, LimoTaxi has successfully expanded its service into various cities in Korea, including Seoul, Cheonan, Jeonju, Yeosu, Busan and Icheon. As its official launch date is approaching, Limotaxi has also merged with HeavenlyIdea (also known as Dangol Taxi), a firm founded by mobile technology experts. The merger was proposed for the purpose of market expansion and enhancement of LimoTaxi’s IT capabilities in January this year.



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• Naver Subsidiary Gogolook Acquires Hong Kong Startup StudioKUMA Gogolook, a subsidiary of Korean Internet giant Naver, announced that it has acquired Hong Kong startup StudioKUMA. The value of the deal was undisclosed. Taipei-based Gogolook itself was purchased by Naver, the maker of Line messaging app, in 2013 for about $17.6 million. Its main product is Whoscall, a caller ID app. Like Whoscall, StudioKUMA is also an app that filters out marketing calls and suspicious numbers. A company representative told TechCrunch that integration with other Naver services (including Line) is a possibility, but in the short-term both will remain standalone products. Gogolook claims the acquisition of StudioKUMA doubles its daily active users in Hong Kong to 2 million. Whoscall currently has 20 million users around the world and a database of over 700 million telephone numbers. It plans to invest heavily in Hong Kong for R&D as well as product development this year. The company believes Hong Kong is a potentially lucrative market for call-screening apps because 23 percent of Hong Kong residents surveyed by the Hong Kong University Social Sciences Research Centre said they receive more than six marketing calls a week, even after attempting to unsubscribe from calling lists. The acquisition is part of Gogolook’s strategy to expand Whoscall’s userbase in East Asia. The company plans to focus on Taiwan, Korea, and Japan this year and will move on Southeast Asia in 2015.

Japan • Metaps hauls in US$36M, strengthens focus on payments and artificial intelligence

Metaps, as a must-use tool for app monetization, announced that it has nabbed US$36 million in a series C round. The full list of investors are not being disclosed at this time, but the company has confirmed that previous investors were included, though Sato declined to identify them. Given Metaps’ global reach, this means that Fidelity Growth Partners Japan, the only non-domestic VC firm among the existing investors is very likely involved. The company is making no move away from the app monetization industry, but the new funds are primarily earmarked for strengthening its fledging online payments service, Spike, as well as harnessing the reams of data gathered from app users. Spike launched in March 2014 as a freemium online payment solution. Merchants with less than US$10,000 in monthly transactions can use it for free. Within seven months the service secured 40,000 merchants – three months later, the number is now over 50,000. Due to the freemium model, Spike is adding a lot of low transaction ecommerce SMEs as customers. The number still stands out, though, considering GMO Payment Gateway (founded in 1995) is one of the market leaders with 55,000 shops using its service. The service is not limited to Japan either. Spike already launched in the US and is planning a European expansion next.

• Raksul is changing printing in Japan and just scored US$33.7M Metaps’ online payment system and app monetization know-how powered it to a hefty US$36 million series C funding round. In roiling markets like China or India, 36 million might not stand out, but in Japan it’s rare for even one startup to get that sort of cash per year. 2015 might turn into a special one – today Raksul, a startup that lowers printing costs, publically confirmed it scored US$33.7 million for its own series C. Ten firms joined the funding round. Repeat investors were Opt, Global Brain, World Innovation Lab, Itochu Technology Ventures, ANRI, Dentsu Digital Holdings, and GMO Venture Partners. The new faces are Link and Motivation Group, Gree Ventures, and Global Catalyst Partners. This funding follows a US$14.3 million series B in February 2014. Printing may not seem sexy, but Raksul has hit onto something. The company is best known for acting as a mediator between users who have printing needs and the thousands of printing companies around Japan ready to serve, taking a percentage of each sale. Users can detail what their printing needs are – and even get assistance with the design and file formatting – and then look around at the different printing options in their area. To save time, users can also rely on Raksul’s own algorithm to find them the best printer and price for their needs. From there, the printing company takes over and delivers the goods to the user.

• Line Life Global Gateway has US$42M for startups Line, the messaging app taking over the world one sticker at a time, announced a new investment fund. Titled the Line Life Global Gateway, the fund will operate independently from Line Ventures, although the latter company along with Line itself are the only two parties putting up capital. The US$42 million fund went live on February 4th and is expected to operate for 10 years. Similar to the US$100 million gaming fund set up last summer this project is also earmarked for a specific purpose – to support startups operating in online-to-offline, ecommerce, payment, media, and entertainment industries. This shift mirrors Line’s own change in priorities. No longer content to be just a gaming and messaging company, the firm has launched a number of lifestyle apps from shopping to payments to television. Although Line Ventures is supplying some of the money for Line Life Global Gateway, the new organization will be a completely separate subsidiary. Speaking with Tech in Asia, a Line spokesperson said that Line does not use the same investment team for its three funds. Further, they pointed out that Line keeps the funds



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and teams separate because they are focused on different things. While it is plenty common to have a single investment team at a single VC firm focus on multiple verticals, Line’s approach to arranging its investments is unlikely to ruffle any entrepreneur’s feathers. The company’s name brand is strong and it is investing both in Japan and without.

India • Practo gets an injection of US$30M from Sequoia, Matrix for expansion to 41 more cities

Indian healthtech startup Practo announced that it raised US$30 million in a series B round of funding led by existing investor Sequoia Capital. Matrix Partners participated in the round. In 2012, Sequoia had invested US$4 million in the company. Practo’s search engine helps one million users book 120,000 appointments on average in a month, says a statement from the company. The fresh funds will be used to expand to 35 more cities in India and 6 cities abroad over the next six months. Besides India, Practo is already up and running in Singapore and the Philippines. Practo has a proprietary algorithm, which ranks doctors listed on the site based on user needs – location and specialty, feedback from patients, and appointment experience. The number of appointments booked with a doctor in the last 30 days, doctor’s availability, and patient’s recommendations are key parameters to rank doctors. Patients looking for doctors can pick the most suitable ones based on these and other criteria. In Bangalore itself, another doctor search portal Qikwell raised series A funding just over three months ago from SAIF Partners. It has gained traction quickly with the promise of getting confirmed appointments with doctors who have busy schedules.

• Stayzilla, India’s Airbnb, raises US$20M to reach 8,000 towns by year-end India is a diverse country, and Stayzilla is a diverse site for travelers looking for places to stay. It has something for everyone: from hotels, homestays, and peer-to-peer rentals a la Airbnb to guest houses, jungle lodges, and boat houses. More than a third of its accommodations are alternative options. This diverse approach has helped Stayzilla fan out rapidly across the large country, with a presence in over 1,200 Indian towns and more than 20,000 properties listed on its site. Now, it has just raised US$20 million in series B funding from Nexus Venture Partners and Matrix Partners to scale that up to 50,000 properties in 8,000 places by the end of this year, according to a statement. Founded in 2010, Stayzilla received funding of US$500,000 from the Indian Angel Network, which was followed up by series A funding of an undisclosed amount from Matrix Partners India and IAN last year. Its founder Yogendra Vasupal, a.k.a. Yogi, is an engineering dropout who started taking on web-based projects from the age of 19.

• Capital Float gets US$13M from SAIF, Sequoia to give startups easier access to loans Founded in 2013, Capital Float announced that it has raised US$13 million in series A funding led by SAIF Partners and Sequoia Capital, with participation from existing investor Aspada. The startup evaluates the financial health of SMEs and provides working capital to companies not being served adequately by traditional banks. The Capital Float platform has so far delivered US$6.4 million in loans to SMEs in 10 cities across India. Last year, the company raised US$2 million from Aspada and US$1 million from SAIF Partners. A statement on the funding says the company saw a ten-fold increase last year in online applications, particularly in the ecommerce market, where it is partnering with sites like Snapdeal, Flipkart, Amazon, and PayTM to finance small merchants selling online. The fresh funding will support a nationwide expansion program. Rishyasringa has an MBA from Stanford University and graduated magna cum laude in Economics from Princeton University. Prior to Capital Float, he was working with McKinsey & Company. His co-founder Hinduja too has an MBA from Stanford University.

• Quick hiring startup MyNoticePeriod raises US$3M funding from IDG Ventures Recruitment startups have been attracting the attention of venture capital firms, with tech-based differentiators from the traditional job portals. One of these is MyNoticePeriod which has raised close to US$3 million (INR 180 million) from IDG Ventures. It had raised US$322,000 in seed funding from angel investors and IDG Ventures just four months earlier. A statement from the company, announcing the new funding, says MyNoticePeriod has seen rapid growth in both job-seekers and recruiters, with over 400 companies using the platform. MyNoticePeriod was incubated in the software industry body Nasscom’s 10,000 Startups program. Its focus was on quick hiring by identifying candidates actively looking for jobs. It began with candidates serving out a notice period in their companies; hence the name. Now its roster has expanded to include all candidates actively seeking jobs. .

• FreeCharge raises US$80M as its uniquely Indian rewards-based model gains traction

FreeCharge, which provides a platform for recharging mobile phones and data cards in India, announced that it has raised US$80 million in series C funding. New investors Valiant Capital Management and Tybourne Capital



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Management came on board in this round. Existing investors Sequoia Capital, RuNet, and Sofina also participated. FreeCharge has seen transactions take off on its platform in sync with the smartphone explosion in India. This attracted Sequoia in a US$33 million series B funding round in September last year, and now it’s poised to scale up faster this year. It’s a uniquely Indian business model of rewarding users for using the platform to recharge their phones, and could be replicated in other markets. FreeCharge CEO Alok Goel told Tech in Asia that it will also leverage its growing user base for targeted marketing. The company recently launched FreeCharge ‘Delights’ which are rewards for consumers on purchases from leading e-commerce sites in India. It also has tie-ups with food outlets such as McDonalds. This round of funding will be used for product innovations on mobile. The company says it has a customer base of more than 20 million.

• NewsHunt, India’s news reader app for local languages, raises US$40.5M in funding India’s homegrown news reader app NewsHunt has secured US$40.5 million in a series C funding round led by New York-based hedge fund Falcon Edge Capital. Existing investors Matrix Partners India, Sequoia Capital India, and Omidyar Network also participated in this round of funding. Newshunt raised US$16 million in a Series B round of funding led by Sequoia Capital last year. The app has a wide collection of regional content in over 12 languages making it the leading app for local language users in India with about 75 million downloads to date. Aside from aggregating national and international news, the app also has an ebookstore. So far, over 10 million ebooks have been downloaded by 2 million NewsHunt users. 40 percent of the users are paid members. Payments for ebooks are handled by the company’s own epayments system, called iPayy, which supports carrier billing for microtransactions. In the last six months, an estimated 4 million unique customers have used the iPayy platform for payments. NewsHunt supports the country’s top English dailies but the bigger draw is the coverage of the vernacular newspapers around the country. The app also supports a few publications from Bangladesh and the African continent. NewsHunt app users consume a cumulative average of 1.7 billion pages per month.

Indonesia • Indonesia’s Vela Asia closes US$1.5M series A funding round from Singapore-based Majuven

Founded in 2012, Indonesian fashion ecommerce and brand partner Vela Asia announced that it closed a series A funding round of US$1.5 million led by Singapore-based venture capital firm Majuven. Vela Asia will use the funds to drive growth across its partners’ websites and expand its technology offerings. Brands working with Vela Asia currently have access to real-time information about website performance, but the co-founders say this is also something they want to improve. Vela Asia is a two-year-old company in Jakarta, and claims to have captured an appealing section of Indonesia’s online fashion market. Vela represents international fashion brands such as Lee Cooper and Havaianas by building and operating their ecommerce stores in Indonesia. The startup says it is currently the exclusive online partner for more than ten fashion brands, and there will be more coming soon. Majuven is run by several prominent business figures including SingPost chairman Ho Kee Lim and former SingTel CEO Lee Hsien Yang. The investment in Vela is part of a wider push by Majuven to expand its holdings in ecommerce. The VC firm adds that it is currently working on a number of other regional deals.

• Indonesian marketplace BukaLapak receives series B funding from local media group Emtek Indonesia’s second largest media company Emtek Group announced that it made a series B investment of an undisclosed amount in local online marketplace BukaLapak. BukaLapak founder Achmad Zaky says the fresh funds will be used to grow the startup’s staff and adopt new marketing strategies to spread brand awareness. Zaky also hopes to acquire more Indonesian SMEs as vendors on its marketplace. This could be interpreted as an early step for BukaLapak (a consumer-to-consumer marketplace) to make the move toward business-to-consumer sales. BukaLapak received its series A investment last February from price comparison site Aucfan, IREP, 500 Startups, and GREE Ventures. Zaky says BukaLapak facilitated more than US$80 million in transactions during 2014 with the highest sales occuring in the gadgets, fashion, and hobbies verticals. BukaLapak’s merchants reached 163,000 sellers at the beginning of this year.

Singapore • Pirate3D raises $2M, plans pro printer targeted at architects and designers

Pirate3D, which makes affordable yet stylish 3D printers, raised US$2 million in a seed round involving individual investors from Singapore and Germany. Also, a quarter of the money came from Low Capital Management, a Singapore-based family office. The startup had a pre-money valuation of over US$8 million, and it plans to raise another US$3 to US$5 million before the year ends. The funds will go towards fulfilling existing orders and refund



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requests, expanding the R&D team, and increasing manufacturing capabilities. “[We want] to really ramp up production and get those sweet volume discounts. If we buy materials in bulk we save 25 to 30 percent off the printer bill of materials price, which is fantastic,” said Pirate3D co-founder Brendan Goh. The company previously received US$1.43 million through a crowdfunding campaign in June 2013 – a record for a Singapore company that still stands today. But it later faced delivery delays caused by manufacturing and design problems, leading to plenty of irate customers demanding refunds. The company returned money to just under 15 percent of backers at the time of writing.

Philippines • Lamudi raises US$18 million, merges Asia and Latin America operations

Emerging markets property listings site Lamudi raised US$18 million in fresh funds to further grow its operations in Asia and Latin America. It also announced that it merged its operations in both regions to form Lamudi Global. The investment came from Asia Pacific Internet Group, a joint venture of Rocket Internet and Ooredoo; Holtzbrinck Ventures, the investment arm of the German publishing group; and current investor Tengelmann Ventures, a division of international multi-sector retailer Tengelmann Group. Lamudi’s global co-founder Kian Moini says, “Since Lamudi’s foundation, our goal has been to build the biggest real estate platform in the emerging markets. In less than two years, we have created a comprehensive online database for house-hunters that stretches from the Philippines to Peru. Since its launch in October 2013, Lamudi has operated in 32 countries in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America. It has 800,000 property listings globally, 550,000 of which are in Asia and Latin America alone. The site, which focuses on emerging markets, allows property brokers to list homes for sale and rent. It has seen tremendous growth over recent years as more and more consumers take their real estate journeys to the web. Lamudi launched in the Philippines just a year ago, but already it has set up two offices outside Metro Manila (Cebu and Davao) with plans for expansion soon. Close to 500,000 users visit the website every month, while its listings have grown to almost 90,000.

• Rocket Internet’s car classifieds site Carmudi gets US$25M to dive deeper into Asia Rocket Internet-backed car classifieds site Carmudi announced a fresh investment round of US$25 million, adding on to the US$10 million it raised early last year. Rocket Internet and Ooredoo’s joint venture Asia Pacific Internet Group (APACIG), Holtzbrinck Ventures, Tengelmann Ventures, and a private investor participated in the latest funding round. The investment will be used to boost its operations in Mexico and Asia. In a statement, the company claims to be seeing a growth rate of over 50 percent across all 20 of its markets – seven of which are in Asia. It also says it has listings of over 300,000 vehicles globally, and has around five million users every month, though it is not clear what percentage of those users are active. The investment demonstrates Rocket Internet’s confidence in Carmudi. According to Stefan Haubold, co-founder and global managing director of Carmudi, the car classifieds site is doing well in several Asian markets, such as Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam. In Asia, Haubold doesn’t see many competitors in the car classifieds space – none that would give him “any headache,” anyway. “So our focus is on growing the overall market, getting people from offline to online, explaining them how easily they can sell a car in less than two minutes, or how they can choose from thousands of cars on the go,” he says.

Thailand • 500 Startups Is Raising A $10M Fund In Thailand To Increase Its Focus On Asia

500 Startup, the U.S. startup investor/accelerator, raised a new $10 million micro-fund, 500 TukTuks, to deepen its efforts in Southeast Asia, especially in Thailand. According to documents, 500 TukTuks will provide an average of around $75,000 as a first investment, usually as part of a seed-stage round with other investors. 500 Startups is the highest profile investor to focus on Thailand to date, and its fund is managed by two of the country’s most prominent startup figures: the CEO of Ookbee and a former U.S.-based Googler who runs ‘Disrupt University,’ a program to increase Thailand’s links with Silicon Valley and mentor young entrepreneurs. 500 Startups has already invested in more than eight Thai companies via 500 Durians, its another $10 million fund for Asia launched in 2013. The fund is not closed yet, but a formal announcement is expected to be made next month.



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United States • 6sense’s predictive powers for sales and marketing help it land US$20 million

San Francisco-based B2B predictive intelligence platform for marketing and sales, 6sense announced a new investment of US$20 million. “Imagine a world where you can predict with above 85 percent accuracy who will buy, what they will buy, how much, what channel will reach them, what message will resonate,” CEO and founder Amanda Kahlow said. The platform merges machine learning with its B2B Buyer Intent Network that includes behavioral data from search engines, B2B trade publications, blogs, forums, and communities. It processes billions of rows of buyer intent data each month to find buyers who are ready to buy. This Series B round, which brings the total raised thus far to $36 million, was led by Bain Capital Ventures, with participation from existing investors Battery Ventures and Venrock. The new money will be used to expand the development and data science team, accelerate marketing and sales investments, and expand customer engagement in new vertical markets. A first annual INmarket user conference will be launched in July. Competitors in the category of predictive lead scoring include Lattice Engines and Infer.

• Warner Bros. invests US$24M more into game video site Machinima Machinima, a digital video site that is dedicated to fandom and gamer culture, has raised US$24 million in funding from Warner Bros. Entertainment and existing investors. The investors include Redpoint Ventures, MK Capital, Coffin Capital, and Allen DeBevoise, Machinima’s former chief executive. Machinima has been in transition for the past year as it continues to grow its monthly viewership. Machinima said that it has 430 million total subscribers worldwide and 170 million monthly unique viewers and 3.7 billion monthly video views. Monthly viewership is up 70 percent from a year ago, and the number of U.S. unique viewers has tripled in a year. Before this round, Machinima had raised $53 million in funding, including an $18 million round in March 2014. Warner Bros. and Machinima have been partners for some time. They have created the live-action web video series “Mortal Kombat Legacy,” and later this year will release “Justice League: Gods and Monsters Chronicles,” an animated video series from DC Comics and Blue Ribbon Content. Machinima has been putting more emphasis on its gifted talent network and original programming. Recently, Machinima announced distribution partnerships with Samsung and Vessel.

• Reserve takes US$15M to be your go-to mobile app for when you’re hungry People are hungry for good service at restaurants, and that’s why mobile concierge app Reserve just raised US$15 million. Reserve books a dinner reservation and sets up a payment option (including tip) so that when you’re done with the meal, you just get a thank you card — not a bill. Reserve’s provides its 114 restaurants with a tablet and software for cashing out its diners. The service costs $5 per reservation and operates in Boston, New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. The company wants to use the money to bring its booking-and-payment service to more people. Reserve combines the utility of apps like OpenTable and Cover into a single package — putting it a step ahead of its competitors. But it also charges for its service, whereas both OpenTable and Cover are free. Despite the fee, Reserve is growing. Helping Reserve to achieve success in the future is a cast of star-studded investors like Wil.i.am, Jared Leto, and Jon Favreau, who will undoubtedly push the product to their famous colleagues. Human Ventures Capital led the syndicate round, a new firm founded by Reserve’s co-founder Joe Marchese, and Expa, a startup strategy company. First Round, Lowercase Capital, Advancit Capital, Sherpa Ventures, SV Angel, Venture51 and Visionnaire Ventures also participated in the raise. Reserve has raised $17.3 million to date.

• Credible, a ‘Kayak for student loans,’ lands US$2.7M for itself The San Francisco-based student loan marketplace Credible announced that it has closed the final US$1.5 million tranche of its US$2.7 million seed financing, the total raised thus far for the two-year-old company. “In ten seconds, a recent graduate can use Credible’s comparison tool to find out if they are overpaying on their student loans,” said founder and CEO Stephen Dash. In five minutes, he added, a student borrower can complete a Profile that enables lenders to offer personalized quotes with exact rates for private loans. In a Dashboard, users can compare such factors as APR, monthly payment, fixed or variable interest rate, total repayments, and estimated savings. More than 15,000 profiles have been created on Credible since it launched last March, of which about 12,000 were entered in the last three months. Investors providing the recently completed funding for Credible include Carthona Capital, Cthulhu Ventures, and Redbus Group. The new money will be used to expand Credible’s team and to build out its user-friendly features, the company told us.

• Website-testing startup Sauce Labs picks up US$15M



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Sauce Labs, which accumulated 3,500 customers for its cloud-based website and mobile app testing services, raised a new US$15 million funding. In 2014, Sauce Labs’ revenue was up 145 percent over the prior year. Now the San Francisco-based startup can build out more of a European presence with data center infrastructure and some new salespeople. The customer list features several big names, including Intuit, PayPal, Sony, Shutterfly, Staples, and Visa. And yet, Sauce Labs hasn’t picked up a buzz the way developer-friendly startups like GitHub and New Relic have. Perhaps as the customer list grows, that could change. Sauce Labs’ testing services are based on the Selenium and Appium open-source tools. Competitors include HP, with its application lifecycle management line of software, as well as startups like BrowserStack. Sauce Labs started in 2008. More than 100 people should work for the startup by year’s end, Cerna said. Existing investor Toba Capital led the new round. To date the startup has raised $36 million.

• Atlanta’s Pindrop Security raises series B round of US$35M to fight phone fraud Pindrop Security announced that it raised US$35 million in a round led by Institutional Venture Partners. The Atlanta-based company has been gaining traction in recent years with its “acoustic fingerprinting” technology that lets it identify people’s voices, locations, and devices, which in turn helps it build a data set of fraudsters. “Over six billion individuals across the globe have access to a phone, yet there has been little security innovation in phone or voice,” said Somesh Dash, general partner at IVP, in a press release. “Pindrop has revolutionized phone and call center security and is poised for impressive growth.” In addition to IVP, investors in the latest round include Andreessen Horowitz, Citi Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, and Webb Investment Network. Most of those firms had already invested in the $11 million round that Pindrop raised in June 2013. “Large financial institutions have traditionally invested heavily to protect themselves against physical and online attacks, but now the bad guys have moved to the phone channel,” said Paul Judge, Pindrop’s chairman, in the press release.

• New round of US$117 million lands a lot of Taboola for content discovery platform

That’s a lot of Taboola, you might say. The company intends to invest the new funds into continuing “to develop cutting edge technology and tools,” said CEO and founder Adam Singolda. He pointed out that the company is heavily tech-oriented, “with close to one hundred mathematicians and engineers — roughly half of the team.” The goal this year is to push Taboola’s tech into its next generation of personalization. In the past, Singolda has mentioned his interest in expanding into recommendations for food, travel, and other categories. The funds will also be used for global expansion, and for what he called “inorganic growth opportunities.” In August, the company bought programmatic ad tech startup Perfect Market, so that automated ads could appear with recommended content. This Series E round, which brings the total investment in Taboola to $157 million, was led by Fidelity Management and Research, with participation from existing investors Marker LLC and Steadfast Capital and from new investors that included Advance Publications, Comcast Ventures, Gruppo Editoriale L’Espresso chairman Carlo De Benedetti, Groupe Arnault, and Yahoo Japan.

• Skimlinks raise US$16 million to bring ‘comtent’ to the masses

Skimlinks, a content monetization platform for digital publishers, announced that the company has raised US$16 million in Series C financing. Frog Capital led the round, with participation from existing investors Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments (BDMI), Greycroft, Sussex Place Ventures, and Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). To date, Skimlinks has raised a total of $24 million in equity. Founded in 2007, Skimlinks creates native monetization solutions for publishers, rewarding them for any e-commerce they drive by automatically turning product links and references into trackable affiliate links. Integrated with more than 20,000 merchants, Skimlinks processes 300 million clicks a month on over 1.5 million sites on the web. In 2014, Skimlinks enjoyed 60 percent revenue growth and was responsible for creating more than $625 million in sales for its retail partners. To support this growth, Skimlinks expanded its team by 40 percent and opened a second office in the U.S., located in New York. With its core technology in place for some time, the funding will help Skimlinks expand their offerings for helping publishers to earn substantially more through content marketing. This Series C round, which was led by Frog Partners Joe Krancki and Iyad Omari, marks Frog Capital’s first investment in Skimlinks.

• Goldman Sachs leads US$43M round in IT monitoring company ScienceLogic ScienceLogic, a company with software for tracking the health of companies’ applications and underlying IT infrastructure, is unveiling today a new US$43 million funding round. The Reston, Va.-based company has been around since 2003, so it’s not exactly the hottest new startup around. But ScienceLogic does have a major new investor to boast of: Goldman Sachs, which led the new round. Previous investors NEA and Intel Capital also participated. The new money will give ScienceLogic the freedom to spend more on sales, marketing, geographical expansion, and further product development. The nature and sheer size of the investment suggests that an exit



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might not be all that far off — and that the company’s technology stands to become more popular. And it’s a vote of the confidence in companies in the business of IT operations management — especially when it can provide a view of cloud infrastructure alongside companies’ existing data center infrastructure. Other companies in the market include HP, IBM, Solarwinds, and Zenoss. ScienceLogic’s customers include AT&T, Cisco, Comcast, Equinix, Kellogg, and SAP. The company announced a $15 million funding round in 2012.

• Accel Partners invests US$15M in KnCMiners to build a 16 nm processor Cloud Bitcoin mining operation KnCMiners announced a new round of funding just five months after its last round. Led by Accel Partners, KnCMiners raised US$15 million to fund a superprocessing 16-nanometer chip for its mining servers. For comparison, Apple’s iPhone 6 and 6 Plus run on a 20-nanometer processor. The new chip has already been taped out by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. KnC expects to be the first company to market with this kind of technology. The new chip will mean KnC should be able to generate Bitcoin at a reliable rate. Between the exorbitant cost of energy associated with mining Bitcoin and the price of Bitcoin hovering around $238, some miners are no longer able to profit off their businesses. KnC, on the other hand, has an efficient data center in Sweden where it processes Bitcoin. The addition of 16 nm chips will only make its process more profitable. KnCMiners started out selling mining equipment to at-home miners. Late last year, however, the company caught flack from some of its buyers for taking too long to send pre-ordered equipment. The company has since offered to refund dissatisfied customers for unfulfilled or delayed orders. It’s also gotten out of the equipment-selling business. Existing investors Creandum, GP Bullhound, and angel investor Martin Wattin contributed to KnCMiner’s series B funding.

• TuneGo raises US$1.2M to help indie musicians find fans — and record deals Based in Las Vegas, TuneGo, a fledgling music discovery service for indie musicians, has raised US$1.2 million and is planning the official launch of its platform for later this quarter. The idea is to provide a platform for independent musicians to get their work in front of potential new fans — and also to connect those musicians with producers and record industry execs who can help them navigate the business. Each of those execs has their own portal on TuneGo, where they can check out promising artists, check out their “TuneGo score,” and potentially make connections with them. That TuneGo score is based on an algorithm that analyzes social network activity, crowdsourced feedback, live event activity, published reviews, and more. The company claims that it can predict an artist’s likelihood of success based on analyzing that data. Competition for this nascent company includes Reverb, which connects fans and musicians, and TuneCore and CDBaby, which give musicians distribution platforms. For digital distribution, most musicians probably count on more established players, like iTunes, Spotify, and SoundCloud. The current round of funding comes from serial entrepreneur Chris Murray and Pasadena Angels investor Kenny Kam.

• AppDirect raises US$50M to power sales for SaaS companies

AppDirect raised US$50 million to grow its e-commerce platform that sells cloud products from the likes of Samsung, Comcast, and Rackspace. Today’s raise brings the company’s total funding to $110 million. AppDirect is a cloud-based marketplace featuring hundreds of software-as-a-service apps. It connects businesses and consumers to the software they’re looking for and gives its clients a management system for handling billing, distribution, and reselling services. The influx of cash couldn’t come at a better time. The market for SaaS products is growing and growing fast (if the Hortonworks IPO is any indication). “As that market grows, [co-CEOs] Nicolas [Desmarais] and Daniel [Saks] have put AppDirect on track to turn their early wins into a durable franchise,” said Peter Thiel, chairman of Mithril Capital Management’s investment committee, in a statement. The company has plans to expand its employee base in Munich and Montreal, as well as open a new office in the San Francisco Bay area. AppDirect is also eyeing areas of Latin America and Asia and expects its staff to grow to over 300 people total in 2015. Mithril led the round, which saw participation from investors Henry Kravis and Paul Fribourg, as well as the Foundry Group, iNovia Capital, and StarVest Partners. AppDirect last raised money in April 2014.

• Yelp acquires online food ordering service Eat24 for US$134M in cash and stock Yelp has acquired Eat24, an online food ordering service and long-time Yelp partner. The deal, which has already closed, is valued at US$134 million and amounts to $75 million in cash and 1.4 million shares of common stock. Founded in 2008, Eat24 competes with the GrubHub Seamless food ordering monolith. Eat24’s 2013 deal with Yelp, where it added an ordering widget to various restaurant pages, gave the service a fighting chance against larger competitors. Following this deal, Yelp and Eat24 will only get closer. Yelp chief Jeremy Stoppelman says he plans to further integrate with Eat24 to “enhance our user experience [allowing] our large consumer audience to transact directly with businesses.” In the same statement, Stoppelman called online ordering “a key vertical for Yelp.” This



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news means quite a bit for Yelp, which has largely sustained itself on advertising, with mixed results. It’s noteworthy, however, that Yelp is in no way giving up the ad business — in fact, it will apparently increase its sales staff by 40 percent this year. In other news, Eat24 only yesterday announced a deal with Sidecar — Sidecar will power some of Eat24’s food deliveries in California.

• Parklet lands US$1.5M so more new employees can get up to speed

Every new employee needs to get into the swing of things, ranging from required paperwork to the new company’s traditions. Startup Parklet specializes in easing that task, and the San Francisco-based firm announced its first outside investment — a US$1.5 million seed round so it can help companies onboard and culturally integrate more new workers. The platform accomplishes this by “automating documentation, syncing employee data across their systems, creating role specific workflows, and making digital versions of their orientation and training documents.” Documentation can include W-4s, required signatures, basic employee info, and a dynamically revised organizational chart. The round was led by Jason Lemkin of Storm Ventures, and Greylock Ventures’ Joseph Ansanelli and Sarah Guo. There were also investments from Facebook cofounder Andrew McCollum, Radius CEO and cofounder Darian Shirazi, and KISSMetrics cofounder Hiten Shah, as well as FundersClub, Winklevoss Capital, and Western Technology Investment.

• ClusterHQ gets US$12M to help devs stick their databases in containers Startup ClusterHQ isn’t really concerned with accumulating revenue right now. And yet, investors have just given the startup US$12 million. That’s because ClusterHQ is currently trying to become a leading startup in the nascent movement to package up application code inside of Linux containers — a supplement or alternative to longstanding virtual machine technology for running multiple applications on top of each physical server. Containers are perceived to be more lightweight than virtual machines, and several companies have begun to adopt the technology. A startup called Docker is at the helm of the container movement. But not all application components can easily be run from containers and then moved around from one server to another. Databases in particular can be tricky for the container model, and that’s what ClusterHQ is focused on. Chief executive Mark Davis wants to increase the adoption of an open-source tool called Flocker that ClusterHQ came out with last year. Davis’ last startup, Virsto, got bought by VMware in 2013. ClusterHQ started in 2008 and pivoted to focus on Docker last year. Its headquarters is Davis’ spare bedroom in Los Altos, California. Most of the startup’s employees work in the English city of Bristol. Accel Partners led the new round. Canaan Partners and previous investors also participated. To date ClusterHQ has raised $15 million.

• With US$5M in tow, Eero will make your Wi-Fi better cover your entire house — not just one corner People struggle to get adequate Wi-Fi coverage throughout their homes all the time, but Eero, a new startup from San Francisco is building a gadget that could help solve that. And it announced that after it raised US$5 million in funding last summer, preorders for its product are now open. Eero’s pod-shaped devices, a new take on the range extender, use mesh networking and Bluetooth to connect and extend your network. You can get just one or multiple (Eero recommends three to cover a typical home). The first connects to your modem, while the others only need a power outlet as they connect to each other via mesh networking via the two radios built inside. The Eero devices are also equipped with Bluetooth chips, and that’s the key to Eero’s bigger vision. Although they currently only serve to connect with Eero’s companion smartphone app, the company will eventually enable the devices to connect to other Bluetooth-equipped devices. First Round Capital led the round, with Stanford University, Menlo Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, Homebrew Ventures, Alexis Ohanian, and Garry Tan also participating.



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Europe

• Sigfox raises France’s biggest VC round ever at US$115M to expand its IoT wireless network Sigfox, a startup based in the southwest corner of France, has raised US$115 million to fund a global expansion of its wireless network that is dedicated to connecting Internet of Things devices. That amount tops the $100 million raised by Paris ride-sharing leader BlaBlaCar last summer, a round that at the time was considered the biggest ever in French history. The $115 million round not only will accelerate Sigfox’s growth, but it should cement its place at the top of any list of Europe’s hottest startups. “This funding will demonstrate that we can work with other partners to provide a network that will help us achieve our vision of a world with more connected devices,” said Sigfox chief executive Ludovic Le Moan in an interview. “It was not easy when we started to raise this round because we didn’t know what the market would be like.” The French government has identified the IoT sector in general as an area of strength for the country’s startups, focusing on hardware, software and the networks that will enable a growing number of connected devices to communicate. Le Moan said he hopes to hire another 100 employees over the next year. The latest round of financing will fund new hiring as well as additional expansion of that network. Investors in the latest round include Spain’s Telefonica, France’s GDF Suez and Japan’s NTT DOCOMO Ventures.

• Construction-oriented startup GenieBelt reels in around US$800K

GenieBelt, a Danish construction-focused startup, has announced that they have obtained around $US800K (700K Euro) in funding from former JustEat CEO Klaus Nyengaard and OnApp CEO Ditlev Bredahl. Including the $500K that the company raised back in 2013, external funding for GenieBelt now totals roughly $1.3 million. GenieBelt CEO and co-founder Gari Nickson says that the company intends to use this latest investment to “improve existing modules, scale to all platforms, develop additional features, and to take on more of the value chain.” GenieBelt publicly launched in November 2014 as a collaboration platform geared specifically towards construction firms. The platform allows users to keep track of various projects, check the status of tasks, access a directory of workers, records actions, receive notifications, and communicate internally. Geniebelt is available on the web and for iOS, while an Android app is in development. The startup operates on a “freemium” model, charging admin users 190 British pounds monthly per user for those who wish to access advanced features. While we do not have information about the company’s userbase, the startup reported in November that they have begun to generate revenue.

• Rocket Internet buys 100% of Kuwaiti Talabat for US$170.85M

Germany’s Rocket Internet seems focused on growing very aggressively via acquisitions across the world. Only a week after it bought 30% of Delivery Hero and the entire shares in Spanish and Italian leaders, Berlin-based incubator-investor has now acquired 100% of Kuwaiti Talabat, the leading food delivery platform in the country and the surrounding region. The transactions pertaining to the deal will be closed in few week, according to a press release. Talabat will also be integrated into Global Online Takeaway Group, which was formed simultaneously with the recent acquisitions. Headquartered in Kuwait, Talabat is one of the major players delivering food in MENA region, operating also in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Oman. It claims around 1300 restaurants across the region, including fast food chains like KFC and Burger King. Oliver Samwer, CEO of Rocket Internet said: “The online food takeaway sector is currently undergoing tremendous change. With the newly created Global Online Takeaway Group, Rocket Internet is at the forefront of consolidating the key markets in one of the most attractive online sectors. The Middle East is one of the most attractive markets with significant growth potential and highly attractive EBITDA margins. The acquisition of Talabat.com is another important step in our long-term global Food & Groceries strategy.”

• Spanish startup Finanzarel takes in about US$797K in new funding

Spanish startup Finanzarel, which has developed a platform to allow companies to crowdfund their invoices, has announced that they have raised US$797,300 (700,000 euros) in funding from undisclosed foreign VCs and local backers. The company plans to use the funding towards improving the platform and boosting their marketing efforts. As a part of the deal, Jose Maria Ayala, former chairman of the Official Credit Institute, will be joining the company’s board of directors. The service allows companies to auction off their invoices to private investors, with Finanzarel generating revenue by taking 0.25% on each invoice monthly. The platform is primarily geared towards SMEs in need of working capital, offering them the ability to trade credits to investors (they explain the concept in greater detail, but you will, unfortunately, need to know Spanish or use Google Translate to get the entire picture). The startup launched last year and reports that they have thus far received credit requests totalling 10 million euros.

• Rocket-backed Lamudi raises about US$18M to grow further in Asia and Latin America



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Real estate classifieds web site Lamudi has raised around US$18million (€16 million) to further grow in Asia and Latin America. It has also decided to merge all its businesses in these two regions in one company Lamudi Global. The round is led by came from Asia Pacific Internet Group, which is a joint venture of Rocket Internet and Ooredoo, and contributed by Holtzbrinck Ventures and Tengelmann Ventures. The fresh funds came only two weeks after the company announced the addition of four new countries in its network of markets. Lamudi’s Global Co-Founder, Kian Moini, said “Since Lamudi’s foundation, our goal has been to build the biggest real estate platform in the emerging markets. In less than two years, we have created a comprehensive online database for house-hunters that stretches from the Philippines to Peru. The international network that operates mainly in emerging markets has therefore expanded its portfolio for classifieds business to 32 countries across Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. The Berlin-headquartered marketplace has raised $7 million investment earlier last year to expand in Asian markets. Lamudi claims to be the leader property classifieds platform in Bangladesh and Myanmar, with strong presence in its Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Indonesia through 2014.

Israel • Microsoft acquires Israeli digital pen company N-trig for US$200M

Just six months after Israeli company N-trig successfully lured Microsoft as a client, the global giant will gobble up the smaller company outright, acquiring it for a reported US$200 million. N-trig creates both touch screens and digital pens to go with them. Despite having top-of-the-line technology and signing big-name clients like Microsoft, Acer, Dell, Toshiba, HP, Sony, Lenovo and HTC, the company has always struggled to turn a profit. Founded in 1999 by Dr. Meir Morag, the company has raised $160 million in ten rounds of financing. But with only $12 million in equity and $5 million in cash, the buyout will not result in significant profits for investors. In 2014, the company tried to issue an IPO at a valuation that was lower than the amount it had raised from investors and received a “going concern warning.” In October, the company cancelled its IPO. But in August, Microsoft switched its pen technology provider from Japan’s Wacom (which has 80 percent of the market) to N-trig. Microsoft also had acquired a stake in the company and reportedly accounted for 79 percent of its revenue. N-trig’s stylus is sold with Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3 tablet.

SparkLabs Global Technology and Internet Market Bi-Monthly Review 0223 2015

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