JD.com, China’s second-largest e-commerce company after Alibaba, is pumping $397 million into Farfetch, a marketplace for luxury brands, as part of a new strategic partnership. JD.com founder and CEO Richard Liu will take a seat on Farfetch’s board as part of the deal, which makes JD.com one of its largest shareholders. Read More
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Chinese startup Tantan, which is probably most comparable to Tinder, has raised $70 million in new capital as it looks to monetize its business for the first time and explore overseas expansion options. Three-year-old Tantan claims 60 million ‘validated’ users — i.e. not fake accounts — of which six million are active on a daily basis. Of those active users, 75 percent… Read More
from TechCrunch
Russia-based online freight service Deliver (formerly iCanDeliver) has closed a seed round of $8 million. The startup automates the process of ordering freight transport and makes things more efficient by finding the closest sender. Read More
from TechCrunch
Zenly’s app lets users see where their friends currently are on a map using constant GPS in the background. People can then message these friends in the app to make plans to hang out.
The Paris-based startup hit 2 million downloads last year, mostly from teens trying to keep up with their friends around town, at school, or at concerts and other events. Zenly had raised $35.1 million… Read More
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Short-term rental management startup Pillow has raised $13.5 million in new funding, and is launching a new product to provide more transparency to apartment owners when renters make their apartments available on platforms like Airbnb. Read More
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Adobe today announced that it has acquired all of Mettle‘s SkyBox technologies and plug-ins for building transitions, titles and effects in VR applications and 360 degree videos. Mettle had already made a name for itself over the last few years by providing these plug-ins for Adobe tools like Premiere Pro and After Effects, to the Adobe team was obviously aware of Mettle’s efforts… Read More
from TechCrunch
Growbots uses machine learning to provide sales teams with the right leads to kickstart their outbound sales process. The service, which argues that its product can save each member of a sales team a few days of work every month, today announced that it has raised a $2.5 million funding round from Buran VC, Lighter Capital and a number of angel investors. This brings the company’s… Read More
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Industrial IoT startup Petasense emerged from stealth today, officially announcing $1.8 million in seed funding and a hardware/software solution designed to help industrial customers understand when equipment needs maintenance by “listening” to its vibrations. As it turns out, machines vibrate at a certain frequency when they are operating smoothly, but as parts begin to wear down,… Read More
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TrueLayer, a London startup that’s built a developer platform to make it easy for fintech companies to access bank APIs — and ride the PSD2 gravy train — has raised $3 million in Series A funding. Read More
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Madrid, Spain-based (and U.S. incorporated) edtech startup Lingokids is on a mission to get young kids learning a second language. The company, previously known as Monkimun, offers language lessons in the form of interactive games for children aged 2-6 and delivered via an online subscription and parental portal. It currently provides English and simplified Chinese, with Spanish to be… Read More
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