Companies

 TechCrunch understands that Minicabster, the UK ‘minicab’ price comparison and booking app, entered administration last month and in the last few days has found a buyer for some of its assets. Read More

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 Amazon has been focusing attention on areas like media streaming, its faster delivery and pickup services, hardware and enterprise via AWS. But it’s also making an effort to reboot one of the more legacy parts of its business: fashion. TechCrunch has learned from multiple sources that the e-commerce giant has eyed up several startups in the fashion sphere as potential acquisitions… Read More

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 ContainerShip, a service that aims to make it easier for developers to use Docker containers to develop and deploy their applications, today announced that it has raised a $2.41 million seed round led by Pittsburgh-based Draper Triangle Ventures and Birchmere Ventures. ContainerShip launched at Disrupt NY 2015.  As the company’s co-founder and CEO Phil Dougherty tells me, the team… Read More

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 The ink is barely dry on Alibaba’s billion dollar investment in Southeast Asia’s Lazada, but already we have news of another Rocket Internet divestment. Zalora, Rocket Internet’s fashion-focused site that raised over $250 million and was once on an equal footing with $1.5 billion-valued Lazada, is shedding two of its lackluster country businesses to cut down on costs,… Read More

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 Hitch — not to be confused with the dating app of the same name — is a new product from the team behind API Changelog and plays in roughly the same space. It promises to offer Software-as-a-Service to help API owners manage and grow their API community, either internally or externally. Read More

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 Barcelona has just clocked up its biggest ever exit — albeit the price-tag on the sale of veteran Spanish ecommerce player Privalia, headquartered in the city, to France’s Ventee-Privee has not been disclosed. Recent rumors swirling about a possible exit for Privalia pegged the price being discussed at up to €500 million. Read More

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 The rise of on-demand startups and other fast-growing businesses like online marketplaces has created a need for reliable ways to verify new hires and customers to make sure they are cut out for the task. Onfido, one of the group of startups building software-based solutions to do just that, has raised $25 million to meet that need. The Series B round was led by Idinvest Partners,… Read More

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 The chatbot craze has claimed another victim. I mean, acquisition. Shopify, the makers of a popular platform used by over 243,000 businesses, from smaller online merchants to big names like Tesla and Budweiser, announced today it’s buying a startup called Kit CRM. The company helps businesses interact with their customers over text messages – yes, “conversational… Read More

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 Poshmark, the site for buying and selling women’s fashion, has announced that it has raised $25 million in a round led by GGV Capital. Hans Tung, managing partner at GGV Capital is joining the company’s board of directors.
Attracting 1.5 million sellers since its launch, Poshmark has found a niche in the clothing resale business, with an app that makes cleaning out your closet… Read More

from TechCrunch

 It’s hard to call a billion dollar exit from an emerging market anything more than a major win, but Lazada, the Rocket Internet-backed e-commerce firm in Southeast Asia, nearly ran out of money before Alibaba swooped in with a $1 billion investment announced yesterday. Read More

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