Singapore-based CoolBitX Technology, the creator of wireless hardware wallet for bitcoins on Thursday has managed to raise S$280,000 (about US$200,000) from Malaysian venture capital firm Midana Capital Inc.

The transaction was made through the FundedHere crowdfunding platform, which facilitates both equity and debt-based crowd finance.

“FundedHere is pleased to provide a funding platform for innovative startups such as CoolBitX. We are always on the lookout for businesses with high growth potential and look forward to being a part of their growth,” said FundedHere’s Co-Founder and Executive Director, Agnes Siaw.

CoolBitX flagship product CoolWallet is in the size of a credit card and works in a similar way to e-banking tokens. That is when paired with CoolBitX’s smartphone app, it is able to take Bitcoins offline and stores the cryptocurrency in the hardware wallet. When users want to use the digital currency, they would have to request for a One-Time-Password and key it into their CoolWallet app.

Unlike other hardware wallets, which requires a computer or a connection to an electronic device to work, CoolWallet claims to be the first wireless external storage device that can be paired with smartphones to enable users to make purchases online using Bitcoins.

The company believes that such decentralised transactions in which Bitcoins transfers are never stored on the smartphone or transmitted over WiFi and internet servers will prevent online hacking.

With this funding, the Bitcoin startup is looking to use the capitals for further research and development, as well as for marketing itself to Taiwan, Japan, and the bitcoin community.

“Bitcoin is already transforming the way we make purchases but for a digital currency to truly take off, users need to be assured that it is both secure and convenient to use. With the support of Midana Capital through FundedHere, CoolBitX is well positioned to make sure Bitcoins are as accessible as a credit card and as secure as a bank,” said CoolBitX’s CEO and Co-Founder, Michael Ou.

Along with the funding announcement, CoolBitX also revealed that it intends to launch its decentralized Bitcoin exchange before the end of 2017.

This new platform will facilitate bitcoin trades from one CoolWallet to another through a trade matching engine. Users can also make fiat deposits through the platform – a money deposit Bitcoin buyers must make in order to purchase the cryptocurrency – on the platform.

Midana Capital focuses on innovative technologies including green-technology, F&B manufacturing, healthcare, Internet of Things, fintech and blockchain.

“Midana Capital is pleased to invest in CoolBitX, which has developed a unique security solution for Bitcoin transactions. We are confident that our investment in CoolBitX will reap rewards for our clients and contribute to the advancement of blockchain technologies in everyday transactions,” said Midana Capital Inc.’s Managing Director, Allan Tan.

By Vivian Foo, Unicorn Media

Zhengzhou Time Funnel Information Tech Co., Ltd., a mobile internet company and the developer of flagship product UUPT.com, a platform that connects errands runners to busy city people has raised RMB96 million (approximately US$13.9 million) via its series A round which was led by Timing Group, a Chinese venture capital founded in 1993.

At present, Timing Group has invested in 21 startups and enterprises, including UrWork, We Doctor, UFO, Day Day Up and more, focusing on health, finance, media, internet, and various other industries.

“We hope to look for the winning genes in enterprises and their founding team in Henan and all of China, and to provide them support in terms of culture, talent, system, brand, and resources to help them realise their inspirations, to be better, stronger and bigger,” said Timing Group.

Another participating investor also includes RICH Capital Partners. The investments made on January 8 by both investors has contributed to one of the largest single financing noted in Henan’s local internet and networking history.

Having its operations formally launched in June 2015, UUPT is currently available in Beijing, Shenzhen, Zhengzhou, Xi’an and 30 other cities. The platform claims to have more than 5 million registered users connected to 300 thousand runners.

The errand runner platform uses an all-inclusive operation, which calculates according to a single case, and the platform is only in charge of connecting errand runners and consumers, whereby the platform earns a 20% commission from every completed transaction.

The platform mainly provides city delivery services, allowing users to contact runners through WeChat or their official Website. The transactions made usually involves delivery services within 20 minutes or a 3 km range.

According to UUPT founder Qiao Songtao, these latest proceeds will be mainly used to improve service quality, data mining, talent acquisition and expansion projects in China, establishing their services in Hangzhou, Shanghai, Nanjing and other first-tier cities, as well as building a centralised operation centre in Beijing.

By Vivian Foo, Unicorn Media

Japan’s cloud automation startup Mobingi announced today that it has secured 250 million yen (about US$2.2 million) in its series A round from its existing investors, Draper Nexus and Archetype Ventures, both are Japan-based Venture Capital.

This round is a follow-on investment subsequent to the tens-of-millions-of-yen (hundreds of thousands of dollars) fundraising from the two firms last February. Following this fundraising, Draper Nexus’s Akira Kurabayashi is also appointed as the Outside Director of Mobingi.

The firm had fundraised 2 million yen (about US$17,500) from Digital Garage in its January 2015 seed round and US$125,000 from 500 Startups. Therefore, with the addition of the new round, the total capital raised is estimated to surpass 300 million yen (about US$2.6 million).

With the latest capitals, Mobingi plans to improve its operation of Mobingi ALM, an application construction automation platform for cloud services, and to launch Mobingi Wave, an application operation-on-cloud automation platform this summer.

Founded in October 2015, Mobingi is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) cloud software solution that seamlessly integrates server deployment, management, scaling and cloud application lifecycle automation.

The company provides an operation and maintenance or DevOps (Development-Operation) automation platform for cloud services, supporting both public and private clouds–all on a single, easy-to-use platform designed exclusively for any size of businesses.

“Mobingi targets small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) having insufficient money in securing human resources specialized in operation,” said Wayland Zhang, the founder and CEO of Mobingi. “The firm offers an ideal environment where it is easy for engineers to focus on development.”

Besides, Mobingi’s platform services are all compatible with Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Fujitsu K5 and Amazon Web Services, in addition to private cloud services based on OpenStack.

“Although most of our current clients are Japanese companies,” said Zhang, “our ambitions are for the firm to commence service provision to Chinese companies within this year and secure a certain sales amount from them utilizing cloud computing.”

According to Zhang, the firm will turn to the enhancement of marketing activities targeting Japanese and Chinese SMEs through participating meetups, seminars, or presentation and exhibition at business conferences beginning this year.

Prior to this, Mobingi is a participant of the Open Network Lab’s 9th batch as well as the 15th batch in the 500 Startups’ acceleration programme.

By Vivian Foo, Unicorn Media

Chinese co-working space startup UrWork has raised its Series B round of financing worth RMB400 million (about US$58 million) from Tianhong Asset Management Co. Ltd, Junfa Real Estate Group, and a number of other Chinese companies.

Other investors also include Chinese property firm Dahong Group and Tianming Shuangchuang Technology, both based in Henan province, as well as Shanghai-based Chuanghehui Fund.

Founded in 2004, Tianhong Asset Management is the mutual fund unit under Alibaba Group’s financial services unit Ant Financial, providing services to users of Alibaba’s Yue’ebao product. As of June 2015, Tianhong has managed RMB948 billion (about US$138 billion) serving over 220 million individual investors.

UrWork, on the other hand, is founded in April 2015 by ex-senior VP of Wanke Enterprise Mao Daqing and aims to become China’s co-working space leader, providing co-working space to individuals and small companies. It is also often said to be a China’s equivalent of the world’s largest co-working space provider, US-based WeWork.

Since its inception, the company has so far raised six rounds of funding with a total venture fundraising of over RMB1.2 billion (about US$175 million). Its last round, prior to this, was three months ago when it completed a RMB200 million (US$31 million) financing round from Gopher Asset Management Co., Ltd., and others.

Its earlier backers also include Sequoia Capital China, Zhen Fund, Sinovation Ventures, Yintai Land and Zhongrong International Trust Co., Ltd.. After the completion of its Series B financing, the company now faces a valuation of nearly RMB7 billion, that is 45 times from its previous valuation of RMB150 million, making it the country’s first so-called unicorn in the domestic sector.

UrWork currently provides 16,535 desks in 40 co-working space locations across 12 cities in China, in which half of the sites are located in Beijing and the remainder spread across eleven other cities. Rather than owning properties, UrWork signs long-term leases of 10 to 15 years to remain asset-light.

With this latest proceeds, the company will use the capital to improve and simplify domestic and oversea UrWork factory layout, innovate internal service ecosystem as well as to standardise the service output model.

Besides, investments will also go to personnel training and investment projects to enhance the team’s overall professionalism as well as the mobile terminal and intelligence hardware in UrWork.

In addition, URWork also plans to open 36 locations across 16 cities in China, with 120,000 square meters of office space with 20,000 desks this year, in addition to seeking expansion overseas, with planned new sites in Singapore, New York, London and Taiwan.

In early December, the company has signed an agreement with International Enterprise Singapore and CapitaLand Limited, hoping to help Chinese and Singaporean small firms to enter the global market.

By Vivian Foo, Unicorn Media