4/02 – Weekly Investment & Fundraising News

  • Fundraising News
  • 04.02.2022 02:06 pm

1. NBK Capital Partners Mezzanine Fund provides $10 million financing to Moove, an African Mobility Fintech 

NBK Capital Partners Mezzanine Fund II (the “Fund”) announced that it closed a US$ 10 million financing facility with Uber’s exclusive vehicle supply partner in Africa, the mobility fintech Moove. The innovative asset-backed venture debt marks the sixth investment from the Fund advised by NBK Capital Partners. The growth facility from the Fund will support Moove’s expansion in West Africa initially, executives said. Moove is the first investment in Africa by NBK Capital Partners funds, underscoring the opportunity for a platform like Moove to address the continent’s vehicle financing gap. 

2. B2B payments platform Billhop raises €10.5 million led by EQT Ventures to help businesses optimize working capital 

Proprietary straight-through processing (STP) payments platform Billhop – which offers businesses process and capital efficiencies based on existing credit card infrastructure – announces it has raised €10.5 million, led by EQT Ventures with participation from Element Ventures, pending SFSA approval. The funding will be used to scale aggressively – including hiring (particularly tech and marketing roles), customer acquisition, and geographical expansion.

3. CoinTracker raises $100 million to make cryptocurrency portfolio tracking and tax compliance seamless for millions of users globally

Executives of CoinTracker shared that they have raised $100M in Series A funding from a world-class group of partners. According to their announcement, Accel, General Catalyst, Initialized Capital, 776 Ventures, and Y Combinator bring a wealth of experience helping build the most iconic tech companies in history. Strategic investments from Coinbase Ventures, Kraken Ventures, and Intuit Ventures are a recognition of our shared mission to help ensure every crypto user can have access to seamless tax compliance and portfolio tracking. Garry Tan, Alexis Ohanian, Claire Hughes Johnson, Gokul Rajaram, Jeremy Liew, and Alex Bouaziz are all partnering with them too.

4. Ayoconnect raises 15$ million Series B to scale Indonesia’s largest open finance API Platform

Ayoconnect, Southeast Asia's largest open finance platform, has closed a $15 million Series B financing round led by Tiger Global. The round was joined by PayU, the payments and fintech business of Prosus, and Alto Partners, as well as individual strategic investors, including Plaid co-founder William Hockey and Jerry Ng, President Commissioner of Bank Jago. Ayoconnect will use the funds to satisfy increasing customer demand for more products and use cases. Ayoconnect is already the largest open finance platform in Indonesia, with more than 200 API customers and 4,000 embedded finance products.

5. Wrk making waves in automation space with $55 million funding announcement

Wrk Technologies Inc. (Wrk), a Montreal-based automation start-up dedicated to transforming and scaling the delivery of work, has secured CAD$55M (USD$43M) in cumulative seed, Series A, and debt financing after completing its Series A led by White Star Capital and OMERS Ventures. 

The total financing announcement includes CAD$12.5M (USD $9.6M) in previously raised seed financing from original seed investors Real Ventures and Desjardins Capital. In addition, several prominent angels including Sharon Rowlands (CEO Web.com), Cherif Habib (CEO Dialogue Health), Mark MacLeod (former CFO Shopify), Charlie Songhurst (former head of strategy Microsoft), and Michael Litt (CEO Vidyard) have invested over the course of the fundraising.

6. Crunchr raises refunding to revolutionize people analytics for enterprise HR Teams 

Crunchr, the People Analytics platform for Enterprise HR teams, announces its latest funding, in a round led by specialist SaaS investor, Oxx. Oxx joins the company's existing strategic investors, Randstad, the world's largest recruitment agency, and Nationale-Nederlanden, a large Dutch insurer.

The funding will be used to add predictive analytics capabilities to the Crunchr platform, which will further expand the platform’s employee retention, skill-based workforce planning, and data-driven storytelling functionality. The remainder of the funding will be used to fuel international expansion, with the company planning to open an office in the United States and to treble the size of the team.

7. Descartes underwriting raises $120 million to become a category leader in corporate insurance worldwide

Descartes Underwriting, the InsurTech company specializing in next-generation corporate insurance solutions to address climate and emerging risks, announces a $120 million Series B funding round. Growth equity firm Highland Europe is leading the raise alongside international investment company Eurazeo, with the participation of existing investors Serena, Cathay Innovation, and Blackfin Capital Partners and new entrants Seaya Ventures and Mundi Ventures. The fresh round of capital comes 18 months after the firm’s $18.5 million Series A funding.

8. Fintech startup Bizi raises $7.5 million seed funding to offer SMBS credit lines

Fintech company Bizi, which provides small and medium-sized businesses in Israel with credit lines, has raised $7.5 million in Seed funding. The round was led by Israeli-founded fintech company BlueVine, whose technology will be used by Bizi, as well as Israeli insurance company Phoenix and Orshay, a company that provides non-banking credit. BlueVine, which is investing in an Israeli company for the first time, has been active in the U.S. over the past decade, providing a banking platform for SMBs. Bizi will use the funding to develop its product and enter the Israeli market, providing credit for businesses through an instant and digital platform.

9. Latin American fintech Tribal raises $60 million in oversubscribed Series B led by SoftBank Latin America Fund

Tribal, a B2B payments and financing platform for emerging markets, has raised $60M in Series B funding led by SoftBank Latin America Fund. Coinbase Ventures also joined the round, which saw participation from existing investors BECO Capital, QED Investors, and Rising Tide. In addition to the $60M Series B, secondary shares were tapped into to add high-value crypto and strategic investors: Circle Ventures, AGE Fund, Third Prime, Canas Capital, and Acuity Ventures.

To support its growing customer base in over 22 countries and its rapid expansion across Latin America, Tribal will use funds from this round to continue building its local teams in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Chile.

10. LemonEdge announces $4 million funding round led by Blackstone

LemonEdge, a modern, low-code accounting platform powering the private capital industry, has completed a $4 million funding round, led by Blackstone Innovation Investments with participation from existing investors, including Sidekick Partners, Lauren Iaslovits (co-founder of Investran and a pioneer of private capital market technologies) and Tikhon Bernstam (founder of Parse and Scribd). The financing increases capital raised to date to $7 million, all within the first year of launch.

LemonEdge enables Private Capital firms to automate and digitize their end-to-end complex accounting processes, many of whom rely on older systems or spreadsheets. In a first for the industry, LemonEdge combines a modern, purpose-built financial engine alongside a customizable low-code platform with a suite of advanced reporting and scenario tools. The company’s cloud-native technology has been designed to support the unique and varied requirements of the private capital industry at scale and across asset classes.

11. Fiat Republic announces $3.5m in funding from Speedinvest, Seedcamp and Credo Ventures to bridge the gap between web3 and banking

London-based company Fiat Republic announced it has secured $3.5 million in seed funding from renowned EU technology investors Speedinvest, Seedcamp and Credo. The startup, which is building a compliance-first, e-money-regulated banking and payments API, is looking to drastically reduce the time and cost of processing fiat currencies for crypto platforms, both at the individual consumer and corporate treasury levels.

While the crypto space continues to experience a boom, amazingly, crypto platforms still struggle to access traditional transaction banking services and are often required to pay hefty risk premiums in lieu of greater assurances of compliance and security. To address that, Fiat Republic is elevating the now established Banking-as-a-Service business model and incorporating fiat and crypto compliance at its core to give crypto platforms the much-needed access to mainstream and local payments networks in Europe and beyond, all via a single API.

12. Billhop receives €10.5 million investment by EQT Ventures with participation from Element Ventures

Proprietary straight-through processing (STP) payments platform Billhop – which offers businesses process and capital efficiencies based on existing credit card infrastructure – announces it has raised €10.5 million, led by EQT Ventures with participation from Element Ventures, pending SFSA approval. The funding will be used to scale aggressively – including hiring (particularly tech and marketing roles), customer acquisition, and geographical expansion.

13. ChargeBee Doubles Valuation To $3.5 Bn With $250 Mn Funding From Tiger, Sequoia

Chennai-based subscription management unicorn, Chargebee, has announced the closure of a $250 Mn funding round led by major VC funds like Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital. The funding round also saw participation from a slew of other investors like Insight Partners, Sapphire, and Steadview Capital.

With this round, the SaaS startup has more than doubled its valuation to $3.5 Bn in just 9 months. So far, close to $470 Mn have been poured into the startup by various investors. Earlier in April last year, the startup had raised over $125 Mn, valuing it at a $1.4 Bn. Before that, it had raised $55 Mn in its Series F funding round that was led by Insight Partners back in October of 2020.

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