Xola, a software platform that manages booking and marketing for tour providers, is venturing deeper into international markets after closing a $5 million Series A. The funding was led by Rakuten Travel, which is Japan’s largest online travel agency, and contributed half of the round. Read More
from TechCrunch
French startup Drivy has raised another $35 million (€31 million) from Cathay Innovation, Nokia Growth Partners and existing investors Bpifrance, Via-ID and Index Ventures. If you don’t already know Drivy, the company wants to rethink the way car rental works today. Read More
from TechCrunch
NASA is spreading the dough around like a pastry chef. Today the agency announced $50 million in grants to nearly 300 different recipients, from small engineering firms to big-time research institutions. And then it truly shelled out, awarding a $193 million contract to Universities Space Research Association in Maryland. Read More
from TechCrunch
So you wanna buy a startup? But how do you get the deal signed and roll their team into yours? Consulting behemoth Ernst & Young wants to have the answers and rule M&A advisory services in Silicon Valley. So today it acqhired Tasman Consulting, Bay Area specialists in integrating acqhires and acquisitions into their new parent companies. Tasman’s founders Niki Lee and Shari… Read More
from TechCrunch
Online lending company Affirm has announced it is acquiring Sweep, an app-based personal finance tool. The move comes just two weeks after Affirm raised a $100M Series D round, which was partially raised to help the company expand into new product categories outside of lending. Specifically, Max Levchin, co-founder and CEO of Affirm, acknowledged that users will most likely never be… Read More
from TechCrunch
The Indian government has taken several steps to make filing taxes online easier, but the process can still be, well, taxing. ClearTax wants to make it easier. The startup, a Y Combinator alum, just raised angel funding of $1.3 million. Investors include Max Levchin (this is the PayPal co-founder’s first investment in India), Scott Banister, Neeraj Arora, Naval Ravikant, and Ruchi Sanghvi. Read More
from TechCrunch
eBay surpassed first quarter earnings expectations when it reported after the bell on Tuesday. Shares ticked up 5% following the announcement. The e-commerce giant brought in $2.1 billion in revenue, when analysts were expecting $2.08 billion. The company also posted an adjusted 47 cents per share, when Wall Street was forecasting 45 cents. eBay also reported quarterly gross merchandise… Read More
from TechCrunch
Have you ever tried to capture close-up video of yourself or others with a traditional drone? It’s nearly impossible. To solve this problem China-based Zero Zero Robotics has raised $25M to build Hover, a small self-flying drone. The funding is comprised mainly of a $23M Series A round from IDG, and China-focused firms GSR Ventures, ZhenFund, ZUIG. While this is the first… Read More
from TechCrunch
With the recent announcement of Expa Labs, New York-based Expa has also appointed a new General Manager for the incubator in the form of Eric Friedman. Friedman has been an entrepreneur in residence at Expa Labs since July of last year. Previously, he held BisDev positions at Foursquare and also worked as an analyst at Union Square Ventures. Expa Labs is the newly launched incubator arm of… Read More
from TechCrunch
Insurance isn’t necessarily an inviting word, especially for millennials. Not only do young people have less items to insure, but the process of getting insurance for those items is entirely foreign to folks who order their cars, food, cleaning services and more from an iPhone app. That’s where Trov comes in. Trov is an on-demand insurance platform that lets users buy insurance… Read More
from TechCrunch