Category: Funding Rounds

Parentlane, A Connecting Platform For Parents Gets Funding From Capier Investment

Parenting can be a formidable task, as parents bear the responsibilities of raising a new life into the world, shaping their personalities and values.

For this, Parentlane offers a social platform that enables parents to connect with other parents and to a community of parenting experts from grandparents to teachers as well as child psychologists and nutritionists. The company works on a community model, which means it operates on the expansion of its increasing members and growing information.

Founded in December 2015, the Bengaluru-based startup leverages on machine learning and data science technology to map out a child’s development. The company specializes in the child development timeline from the age of a newborn to a toddler of eight.

The company was founded by Vijay Anand which has its first round of angel investment on May 2016 with the round led by Sujeet Kumar, the former president of Flipkart and Aprameya Radharkrishna, the co-founder of TaxiForSure.

On the other hand, this funding by Rohit MA came four months later as an extension of the angel investment round earlier in May whereby the managing director of Cloudnine Hospitals has made the investment through his personal investment arm. The amount was undisclosed.

“I believe Parentlane team has done a great job in leveraging technology to deliver personalized guidance to support parents during their early child development cycle,” said Rohit of Capier Investments, “I am personally excited with their plans in delivering superior value to the entire parenting community.”

The development of Parentlane was due to the realization of the needs of today’s city-educated millennial generation for precise and personalized information related to their child as they become parents. Relatedly, the app also provides parents the opportunity to track and treasure their memories with their child as childhood can be brief. The app is currently only available on the android platform.

About Parentlane:
Parentlane is a social parenting platform empowering parents by delivering personalized, timely assistance to raise smart and healthy kids. Parentlane also allows parents to map the development of their child from their first smile to when they crawl. Aside from that, parents can also obtain personalized baby care and child development tips from registered child experts or other experienced parents. The app cover all aspects of growth and development, brain development activities for kids, food recipes and tips for parents during the journey.

FountainVest Sees Fund Three Close with $2.1 Billion (U.S.)

FountainVest Partners announces the successful completion of its third fund (FountainVest China Capital) with a total capital commitment of $2.1 Billion (U.S.). Due to the oversubscription, the fund attracted exceptional support from current investors along with new institutional investors which included insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds, and pension plans from Europe, the Middle East, North America, Asia, and Europe.

FountainVest believes in China’s vast opportunities within the private sector as the industry consolidate, mergers and acquisitions will fuel the fire and new national leader will rise. With an increasingly complex environment, valuable opportunities rise via expertise and enhancement.

FountainVest was founded in 2007, a firm dedicated to investment and partnership with private enterprise in China – leaders bent on China’s transformation into a consumption economy. In its last round of funding, FountainVest raised $1.35 billion (U.S.) while its original funding campaign closed just shy of $1 billion (U.S.).

April 2016, saw FountainVest partner with Focus Media in the launch of a $400 million (U.S.) investment in sports companies in China and overseas. The firm’s previous investments have included IMAX China, O2O, Fangdd.com, Xingren, and Shanghai Kehua.

Malaysia’s Instant Delivery Startup, RunningMan Raises US$40K Within 24 Hours

Reaching their targeted amount of RM175K (approximately US$40K) within 24 hours of their pitchIN Equity Crowdfunding, public attention has been centred on a Malaysian logistics startup company known as RunningMan.

A platform that offers instant delivery services, RunningMan caters the needs of those that wish to save a trip to their nearby shops or restaurants as with RunningMan riders stationed at strategic points within the coverage area, deliveries are able to be made within an hour.

The startup though launched in May 2015, was however already in play during founders Andrew Chee and Tan Wei Yong’s university days. The idea was Initially borne out of their intention to generate sufficient income to cover student expenses and cater the needs of hungry but busy students in the university.

And as the idea continue to grow and show potential, they decided to nurture it. Making history with their pitchIN Equity Crowdfunding held on August 22nd which has raised funds worth US$40K led by Nexea Angels, BizAngel Network, and WTF Accelerator.

“We are very happy to see that investors believe in us. We may be a young team but we have proven with our results that we have the potential to become a leading player in the on-demand economy,” said Andrew Chee, the Founder and CEO of RunningMan.

Despite moving from food deliveries to full last-mile logistic services or with its user base expanding from 200 to 7000, RunningMan continues to deliver results. To date, they have achieved an averaged 20% monthly growth without going into the red.

Intending to continue their success, Chee further adds that “The funds acquired will be used to build better mobile and IT solutions as well as to expand and cover the full area of Klang Valley to assist consumers and businesses with their delivery and purchasing needs.”

About RunningMan:
RunningMan serves as an e-commerce platform which allows users to connect to shops located within their vicinity. The application facilitates instant delivery service whereby users can pick their desired products and have runners deliver them straight to the user’s doorstep. The RunningMan delivery team has sent various items ranging from food and groceries to cooking gas and pet supplies as per requested, all typically sent within an hour.

Grab Raises US$750 Million In Funding To Go Up Against Uber Southeast Asia Expansion

Grab, formerly known as GrabTaxi and the largest company rivaling Uber in Southeast Asia has raised an amount of US$750 million in their Series F investment rounds. The oversubscribed funding was said to be led by Japan’s SoftBank and China’s Didi Kuaidi.

This achievement is quite the milestone for the company which has launched in 2012, as with the closure of this new round of funding, the top ride-hailing app is now at a valuation of US$2.3billion, as reported by TechCrunch, making it the second largest tech company in Southeast Asia, after Garena which was reported to be at US$3.75 billion.

The funds collected will be dedicated to several projects promoting market expansion as well as localized service, an insight that Grab founder and chief executive, Anthony Tan says is the key to consolidate and expand their spot in the Southeast Asia region.

“There is a clear advantage of being local which brought us to form global partnerships that include other local players”, said Anthony in a CNBC interview. “It’s about the reliance on their better understanding of local knowledge and also a way in how we make sure that users stay exclusively on our platform, never having the need to move to another app.”

Thus, looking at Grab’s partnerships with China’s Didi Kuaidi, India’s Ola and U.S.-based Lyf, it is a view that covers a broader market paired with local expertise. In this case, Uber will have to step up its game faced with this intense competition, furthermore aided by this dose of cash injection.

But ultimately, for Grab, the funds will not only be able to strengthen their ability to pursue their long-term goals, of continuing market penetration and leadership but also to construct their startup vision as well, and that is “to drive Southeast Asia transportation forward and transform the region’s mobile internet ecosystem”.

About Grab:
Offering car, motorbike and taxi-hailing services in a total of 31 cities in 6 countries, Grab is an online transportation network and technology company that offers ride-sharing services in the Southeast Asia region which includes countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Philippines.

JoJonomic Reach Singapore After Grabbing $1.5m Series A Funding For Expense Management Software

JoJonomic is an Indonesian startup that got their breakthrough when participating in Google’s launch pad accelerator in January 2016. One of just eight Indonesian companies selected, their expense management software stood out.

Originally designed to help everyday people keep track of the day-to-day expenses by using a smartphone app to digitize receipts, tickets and more, offsetting income against expenses, they have now added business functionality that will allow the app to function effectively as software-as-a-service for businesses.

Streamlining Company Expense Management

The app is designed to streamline the process of reimbursing staff for their expenses. Individuals digitize their receipts and tickets as they normally would through the app, then send a request to the relevant department. Someone at the department then receives a notification, reviews the claim and either approves or refuses the request.

Because everything happens inside one app, it means less can be lost or miscommunicated across multiple emails, software, accounting processes and so on.

Business To Business

The company will continue offering its consumer based expense management system, which can track expenditure and income on behalf of users.

Where they’ll make their money is through their business to business offer, which will help small businesses manage expense claims as effectively and quickly as possible. The business to business application is currently aimed at small businesses, but scalability and enterprise features are reportedly in the pipeline to make the app more attractive to businesses of all sizes.

Customers

The company’s customers are currently all in Indonesia, and many of them are start-ups. What they lack in prestige clients they more than make up for in volume: more than forty companies now use the app as their standard expense management system, showing what they have built has proven itself in the open market. Of these, Go-Jek, Lazada, and Kudo are the ones you’ve probably heard of.

Market Penetration

While they’re heavily invested in Indonesia right now, the opening of a new office in Singapore is making increasingly likely that the company will be looking to larger international markets for users sooner rather than later. This successful investment is also designed to be used for expansion, making now the time to get on board.

Series A Investors

This funding round was led by Maloekoe Ventures, and has attracted investment from Golden Gate Ventures, Fenox Venture Capital, and East Venture among others. This is likely because, with language support, the basic architecture of software as a service can very easily be adapted for multinational use, meaning the sky is the limit for the product if successful.

Maloekoe Ventures have gone on record saying the product has impressed them, and has their faith moving forward. Themselves a fledgling investment fund, they are sure to have wanted a sure thing to back in their first big play, and that should give people cause for confidence.

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