Fundings & Exits – TechCrunch

 Habito, a London startup that is bringing the entire mortgage process online, has raised £18.5 million in Series B funding. Atomico, the European VC firm founded by Skype’s Niklas Zennström, led the round. Read More

 At our TechCrunch China event in June we discussed the bright future that Hong Kong’s startup scene has, despite some big challenges. This week the country passed a notable milestone as it got its first $1 billion valued startup, better known as a unicorn. The company in question is GoGoVan, a logistics on-demand provider that connects van drivers and customers for transporting goods. Read More

 Lan Xuezhao has spent the last few months pulling together $136 million for her new machine intelligence-focused venture capital fund, Basis Set Ventures. I met Xuezhao for tea on a park bench in Potrero Hill earlier this week to chat about her strategy for the fund. Read More

 Treebo Hotels, one of the most prominent members of India’s emerging budget hotel networks, has closed a $34 million Series C round. The deal was led by new backers Ward Ferry Management and Karst Peak Capital, two Hong Kong PE firms, with participation from existing investors SAIF Partners, Matrix Partners India and Bertelsmann India Investments. Before this deal, two-year-old Treebo… Read More

 Half a decade after it was founded, website building platform Strikingly finally decided its time to raise a Series A. The Y Combinator alum announced that it closed a $6 million round from investors including CAS Holding, Infinity Venture Partners, Innovation Works, former Y Combinator partner Kevin Hale and TEEC. Strikingly also recently launched an app that lets users build and publish… Read More

 De-cloaking today is a new startup from two of the founders of defunct food delivery company Take Eat Easy. Dubbed Cowboy, the company is building a new electronic bicycle that it claims will address issues that have historically stopped e-bikes from becoming a “fully fledged mobility solution”. Read More

 Uber has a new CEO and he wasted no time in talking about IPO prospects. Addressing employees at a company meeting today, Dara Khosrowshahi, who recently had the top job at public company Expedia, said that Uber could IPO as soon as 18 months. He also said it could take up to 36 months (three years), but that the timing wasn’t finalized. Read More

 If you travel a lot for work, you know there are two kinds of employees. There are those who spend less than the budget allows and those who push it to the very limit. Most people don’t feel incentivized to save money for their employer, so that’s why a handful of startups are attempting to solve this problem by rewarding travelers for cost-savings. TravelBank is the latest. Read More

 Adwerx is a well-known advertising and re-targeting network for real estate agents (though if you’re not in that line of business, chances are you’ve never heard of it, of course). The Durham, NC-based company today announced that it has raised a $4.3 million funding round led by Grotech Ventures, with participation from Bull City Venture Partners and Alerion Ventures. Read More

 Domuso, a property management system and payment portal that lets tenants in sticky situations pay late rent over time, has raised $3.1M in funding. This brings the total amount raised for the startup, which was part of the TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2017 Battlefield competition, to $5.8M. The concept for Domuso is straightforward – there are certain life events that sometimes get in the way… Read More

 One growing sector we can add to the travel accommodation list is long term stays for business travelers. Enter Cologne-based Homelike, founded in 2015 by Dustin Figge and Christoph Kasper. The German startup targets business travelers who need “long-stay” accommodation of a month or more and for which a hotel doesn’t really cut it. Read More

 Thailand’s banks have stepped up to chase the startup dream over the past year. Following on from SCB’s Digital Ventures, which has backed blockchain startup Ripple among others, Kasikorn Bank (KBank) has made the first investment from its $30 million fund — a $1.15 million round for Bangkok-based FlowAccount. KBank announced its Beacon fund this summer. It has made… Read More

 Uber’s Asia-based rival Grab has confirmed that it has taken an undisclosed investment from Toyota. The Japanese automotive giant has been named as one of the participants in Grab’s Series G round which is targeted at $2.5 billion. The Singapore-headquartered company confirmed that SoftBank and China’s Didi contributed $2 billion, but it is collecting an additional $500… Read More

 Appier, a Taiwanese startup that helps companies harness artificial intelligence to make marketing decisions, announced today that it has raised a $33 million Series C round from an impressive roster of Asian investors. They are SoftBank Group Corp., Line Corp., Naver Corp., EDBI and Hong Kong-based financial services firm AMTD Group. Read More

 Two years ago, Ember launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo to build a mug that keeps hot drinks hot and iced drinks cool. Contributors gave the company nearly $362,000. Fast-forward and the five-year-old startup has now raised just north of $24 million altogether, including a $13 million Series C round that it quietly closed last week. Read More

 Busy parents could benefit a lot from ridesharing, but they can’t send their children alone in an Uber until they are 18 years old. That’s why several startups are trying to build an “Uber for kids” concept, acting as a shuttle to take kids from school to soccer practice or home. There’s HopSkipDrive and Shuddle (which shut down), but now a newer entrant, Zūm… Read More

 Gigster is shifting from letting anyone outsource full-stack app development to building next-gen tech projects for big companies. If an enterprise needs machine learning and vision, data visualization, blockchain, React or Swift work done and doesn’t want to hire full-time employees, Gigster assembles a squad of freelancers and guarantees the work at a fixed price. Read More

 BunkerEx is a newly-funded startup out of London that is building an online marketplace to change the way shipping companies buy fuel, or ‘bunkers,’ to use the correct industry term. Read More

 Fraud detection is a huge problem for retailers and the banking industry. But as companies fortify their defenses against fraudsters, the criminal element finds new weaknesses to exploit. The latest tactic has been phone spoofing, and fraud at the call center itself. Helping to ward off the  latest wave of fake accounts is Next Caller, a Y Combinator-backed startup based in New York. Read More

 Skidos, an edtech startup based in Copenhagen after relocating its HQ from New Delhi, offers an SDK to help games developers turn casual games into “learning apps”. Read More