Shanghai-based biotech startup Ark Biosciences has recently raised an undisclosed amount in a Series A+ funding round led by Bioventure Investment Management, a Chinese medical and pharmaceutical-focused venture capital.

The startup focusing on innovative drug discovery and development especially in the respiratory viruses, influenza, and Hepatitis B field for worldwide markets current financing round also received participation by existing investors Qiming Venture Partners, Morningside Venture Capital, and Oriza Capital.

“Bioventure is focusing on investments in innovative drugs which are driven by clinical requirements,” said Chen Jie, a partner at Bioventure. “Ark Biosciences is very experienced in the antiviral drugs field, and I believe the company will bring innovative products for respiratory syncytial virus.”

Founded in 2003 by Dr. Jim Wu, Ark Bioscience at present develops an AK0529 drug targeting respiratory viruses, an AK0612 drug targeting influenza, as well as an AK0701 drug and two other projects targeting the Hepatitis B virus.

Last week, the company announced that its AK0529 drug which targets respiratory viruses has gained approval from the China Food and Drug Administration, allowing the biotech startup to commence their clinical trials.

With the latest proceedings, the company will support the phase II study of AK0592, as well as clinical trials of other drugs in its pipeline. The AK0529 drug completed its phase I clinical trial in Australia in 2015 and is in the phase II trial of Viral Inhibition in Children for Treatment Of RSV.

Suzhou-based Bioventure Investment was founded in 2013 by Chen Jie, former managing director at CXC Capital. The company currently has RMB2 billion (about US$280 million) under management. It has made over 30 investments in companies in China and U.S. including Chiral Quest, BrightGene, Suzhou Kintor Pharmaceutical Inc. and PegBio Co. Ltd.

By Vivian Foo, Unicorn Media

Gurgaon-based Holiday Triangle Travel Pvt. Ltd, the operator of TravelTriangle.com, on Monday, has raised US$10 million in a Series B round led by RB Investments, along with the participation from existing investors SAIF Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners.

With this round of financing, the platform plans to enhance features in the product and increase the organic traffic on the platform, as it aims to work towards profitability in the next 18 months.

“We have grown faster than OTAs (Online Travel Agents) in the leisure segment and are now fast approaching their scale. With this new round of investment, we will be able to achieve our vision faster. Our success up till now has been the effort of our super-motivated team,” said Sankalp Agarwal, the Co-founder and CEO of TravelTriangle.

Additionally, TravelTriangle also plans to convert this investment into offers for both their suppliers (tour operators) and users – through building a software for their supplier’s walk-in clients and expanding the EMI payment feature for users.

Founded in 2011 by Sankalp Agarwal, Prabhat Gupta, and Sanchit Garg, TravelTriangle is a holiday marketplace that connects travelers to local travel agents, in addition to fetching quotations, customising personalised trips and facilitating online bookings.

With a team of more than 400 people, TravelTriangle operates from offices located in Noida, Gurgaon, Mumbai and the United States. To date, the company has a network of over 640 travel agents, in which it expects to increase to over 1,500 agents in the next 18 months, according to Agrawal.

The company also aims to serve more than 100 holiday destinations across India and worldwide. At present, its content attracts around 2 million monthly visitiors on its website and has served travelers from more than 65 countries.

Previously, the travel platform had raised a US$1.7 million pre-series A funding from SAIF Partners in July 2014, followed by a series A round of US$8 million from Bessemer Venture in April 2015.

By Vivian Foo, Unicorn Media

Mobile compression software startup AdStringO is reportedly in talks with multiple venture funds to raise US$5 million in its Series A financing round which is expected to close by April.

The proceeds from this round are intended to fund the company’s international expansion and to cash in on the cooperative banks’ need to facilitate digital transactions.

“We want to expand aggressively to other countries like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and some countries in Africa, and also cater to the cooperative banks sector which has been greatly impacted by the government’s demonetisation since they lack any sort of technology infrastructure to support digital transactions,” said Mohan Chandrasekaran, the CEO of AdStringO.

Co-founded in September 2014 by Chandrasekaran and Sankar Mahalingam, AdStringO uses a technology which compresses images, PDF, audio and videos up to 1/10th of the file size, that is up to 90 percent with the same visual quality.

The AdStringO’s compression software is especially helpful to field representatives or customers themselves to capture, documents, images, and videos using scanners, webcams and mobile phones, then to compress them without losing aspect ratio and metadata to initiate business processes at the transaction point itself.

Its portfolio includes customers including Tata Group, ICICI Bank, HDFC, Kotak, IDBI Federal, Pidilite, Johnson-Johnson, OEC, Videocon, ICICI Prudential, and Bria Sun Life Insurance among some.

Commenting on the fundraising, Chandrasekaran said that, “We are in the last stages of signing up a couple of large cooperative banks to enable them to provide services to customers such as opening loan accounts using mobile technology without incurring costs on opening new bank accounts.”

This fundraising follows AdStringO’s angel round in June 2015 whereby the Mumbai-based startup has raised US$350,000 from Indian Angel Network (IAN).

By Vivian Foo, Unicorn Media

Tokyo-based Coiney, a mobile payments startup, announced today that it has completed an 800 million yen funding from SBI Investment, Dentsu Digital Holdings (DDH), and existing shareholder Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ), as well as an investment loan from Seibu Shinkin Bank.

The company will use the latest proceedings for talent acquisition, to recruit more engineers as well as to strengthen their sales and marketing team for expanding their payments solution and services – Coiney Terminal, Coiney Payge and Coiney Engine.

Launched in October 2012, before Square set foot in Japan, Coiney is a startup providing credit card payment devices whereby merchants can collect customers’ credit card payments via the pairing of Coiney with a smartphone.

Its flagship product, Coiney Terminal is a palm-sized gadget that facilitates smartphone-based payments solution for real stores. It works with smartphones via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and is also compatible with IC cards.

Coiney Payge, on the other hand, is a web-based payments solution for online transactions, in addition to Coiney Engine, a tool which offers a credibility evaluation of business enterprises via artificial intelligence based on the accumulation of payments history and various statistical data collected from Coiney Terminal and Coiney Payge services.

“Initially, we thought that Coiney would spread among areas which facilitate small C2C payments, such as in the realms of the farmers market, beauty products, and restaurants among some, as it seems to be more convenient to settle a transaction via smartphone,” said the President of Coiney, Naoko Samata. “But the results were not as expected. At that time, it actually did not spread much.”

“Therefore, we changed directions, and expanded our services to facilitate larger transactions, focusing mainly in areas including medical hospitals and used-car dealership among some and it turned to be victorious.” She further adds.

On August 2013, Coiney raised over US$5 million from Credit Saison, a leading credit company in Japan. While on October 2013, Coiney raised US$8 million from Innovation Network Corporation of Japan.

At present, Coiney has a business partnership with Seibu Shinkin Bank via Credit Saison and it will continue to seek more collaborations with other local financial institutions.

Speaking on the future of Coiney, Samata also notes that “The present business model was implemented from 5 years ago. Until now, it is still said that we are moving towards a cashless world, but chances are we might even be moving towards an “empty-handed society” where there will be no cards or even smartphones in the future. If that were to be true, Coiney would continue to develop new services as well.”

By Vivian Foo, Unicorn Media