Delhi-based fitness startup Fitnapp has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Noida-based SD Group, a venture firm which is involved in real estate, education and international trading.

Following this fundraising, SD Group’s Sanjay K Baliase will join Fitnapp as a Director whereby he commented, “We, with our team of IIM and IIT alumni, will make Fitnapp a holistic platform to provide 360-degree services in health, beauty, and fitness.”

“This includes services like dieticians, physiotherapists, trainers at home, fitness expert to provide tailor-made fitness solutions to users and Fitnapp-approved fitness centers’ to provide exclusive services to the users, in addition to providing access to healthcare foods, supplements, gadgets, and equipment are also available on platform,” He further added.

Founded in 2015 by Akshay Jhinga, Fitnapp is a mobile marketplace that enables users to discover and purchase fitness services from gyms and fitness centers around them. Besides, it also provides a platform for fitness products like supplements, types of equipment, and gadgets such as fitness band.

The startup sets out with the aim to transform people’s workout by providing them access to numerous fitness activities, under one fitness membership, across a range of cities. Additionally, Fitnapp has also created its own niche in the fitness market through its innovative approach and services which helped it to get into strategic alliances with the brands like Uber, Ola, Shopclues, Mobikwik, and Zomato etc. which offers benefits to clients across different company verticals.

“As of today, we have partnered with over 1,500 gyms and fitness studios in Delhi-NCR. The platform has a monthly subscription plan that suits all range of pocket sizes, which offers the users a single window for all its partner gyms, fitness studios, and activity centers. We currently have a team of 20. The platform projects of acquiring 100,000 users in 12 months,” said Akshay.

With the fresh funding, the Delhi-based startup plans to use the capital for online expansion, increasing the number of associations, partners, and marketing. In the next year, the company also plans to infuse funds into technology and roll out new highly personalized fitness management tools for users.

On top of that, the fund will also be used to expand its assistance-oriented service segment that requires customisation and enhancement for each individual user as well as scale up its operation and expand into new geographical footprints.

“We are on track getting a good response from the app users and will continue to focus on building a profitable and sustainable business in the long term for us and our partners,” Akshay further adds.

At present, Fitnapp services are currently available as an app on the Google Play Store and App Store.

By Vivian Foo, Unicorn Media

LeSports, the sports unit of cash-strapped Chinese Internet and technology conglomerate LeEco, is amid the process of raising RMB3 billion (about US$439 million) from an unnamed investor to support future growth.

Prior to this, LeEco has raised RMB15.04 billion (about US$2.18 billion) from Sun Hongbin, the chairman of Chinese property developer Sunac China Holdings earlier this week.

Following this deal, Sun Hongbin said that, “LeSports will pare back on sports broadcasting rights deals and focus on its core video product.”

Since March 2014, LeSports has become independent from LeTV.com and began distributing its businesses across the entire sports industry, combining events operations, streaming content, and smart devices with internet services.

Its business model revolves across broadcasting sporting events globally, The company has partnered with big sporting events and relevant players in the industry, broadcasting over 300 sporting events in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau, in accordance with their license application.

These sporting events include a two-year exclusive media rights for the Chinese Super League (CSL), a three-year in-depth strategic partnership with Major League Baseball in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau, as well as an exclusive live broadcasting rights for the English Premier League in Hong Kong from 2016 to 2019 and other major titles.

However, LeSports has entered into these broadcasting right agreements of English Premier League, the NBA, the Chinese Super League and ATP at an unexpectedly high price. In some cases, the media company has paid ten times more than its previous contracts.

Commenting on this, Sun Hongbin said that, “Costly broadcasting rights is an area where LeSports will significantly reduce future spending.”

Founded in 2014, LeSports last raised RMB8 billion (about US$1.2 billion) in March 2016 from HNA Group, Chinese celebrity investors Sun Honglei, Jia Nailiang and Liu Tao. Previously, the unit raised RMB800 million (US$122.9 million) in 2015 led by Dalian Wanda Group, with Yunfeng Capital and seven other venture capital firms and individual investors.

LeSports began paring back its businesses significantly at the end of 2016, after a year of rapid expansion and amid a lack of capital that is affecting its parent company, LeEco.

The company plans to reduce 20% of its current 1,000 employee workforce to focus on media content and Internet platforms while cutting back on smart devices and sports events management.

The latest proceeds from the new round will be used to help the company ease cash shortage and support growth.

By Vivian Foo, Unicorn Media

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