Companies

 Grana, a two-year-old online fashion retailer based in Hong Kong, has announced that it has raised $10 million in fresh funding led by Alibaba’s entrepreneurship fund. Read More

from TechCrunch

 Stripe, the startup that lets app publishers, online merchants and other digital businesses include payments features via a few lines of code, is expanding in Asia. After launching in Singapore two weeks ago, the startup is now officially opening for business in Japan. And alongside the Japan launch, Stripe is also picking up a new investor: Sumitomo Mitsui Card Company, the largest… Read More

from TechCrunch

 Benchling, a biotech company out of Y Combinator providing cloud-based software for researchers, tells TechCrunch it has raised $7 million in growth funding to continue creating tools to help the science community access research from big pharma and other leaders in the space.
You might think of Benchling as the Google Docs portion of the life sciences industry. While IT solutions software… Read More

from TechCrunch

 Shopify has acquired Waterloo-based Boltmade, the company announced, bringing the digital consulting and product development firm in-house. The acquisition will add Boltmade’s 21-person team, which mostly consists of engineers and designers, to its operations in Waterloo, focusing on Shopify Plus.
Shopify Plus is the e-commerce provider’s “white glove” offering, with… Read More

from TechCrunch

 When you take your next shower, the water flowing from the faucet may just be recycled. That’s the vision fueling Hamwells, a Netherlands-based startup that launched in the Startup Battlefield at Disrupt London 2015. In the Battlefield, the company presented their e-shower with a re-circulation mode that recycles each drop of water 7 times, significantly reducing the waste… Read More

from TechCrunch

 Remitly, a startup co-founded and led by a former executive of Barclays who saw a gap in the market to build money transfer and other financial services for emerging markets and the “unbanked”, is today announcing that it has raised $38.5 million, as well as expansion to seven more countries in Latin America. The funding, which brings the total raised by Remitly to just under… Read More

from TechCrunch

 The consumer products startup founded by Jessica Alba, The Honest Co., on Friday told the Wall Street Journal that it plans to reformulate its dish soap, laundry detergent and other cleaners after an earlier controversy over their ingredients.
The Honest Co. markets its products as gentler, healthier and more environmentally sustainable than those of mainstream brands in the U.S.
However… Read More

from TechCrunch

 Nutanix made its stock market debut with a bang. After pricing shares at $16, the enterprise data storage company saw 131% gains on its first day of trading.
With clients like Toyota and Best Buy, Nutanix aims to make it easier for businesses to manage their data centers. Its cloud offerings are making infrastructure “invisible, so the businesses can focus on applications and… Read More

from TechCrunch

 We’re taking more digital photos than ever, but we’re not very good about printing them out to enjoy them in our homes. Meanwhile, the digital picture frame market has filled with cheap products that haven’t kept up with technology developments, like ubiquitous Wi-Fi, better photo quality, and higher resolutions, in order to instead chase ever-lower price points. Aura aims… Read More

from TechCrunch

 Security firm Avast has today confirmed the completion of a $1.4 billion acquisition of fellow Czech-based antivirus company AVG. The deal will see Avast’s customer base nearly double — swelling from 230 million to more than 400 million in total, 160M of whom are mobile users. Read More

from TechCrunch