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In Paris, Funding Announcement

French inventory-pooling platform Stockly raises €12 million

Stockly, the French digital platform that helps e-tailers pool and share inventory to avoid stock-outs, has announced it has raised €12 million in capital. Stockly will use the funding to expand across Europe. The funding round involved Eurazeo, the Daphni investment fund and a number of “world-class” business angels, as Stockly stated. Stockly was founded in 2018, and its solutions are already in use at Galeries Lafayette, Decathlon, Go Sport, Jonak and several hundred other partners.

Stockly is able to digitally share the inventory of the various e-tailers that use its tools, boosting stock depth for each of them. The solution is invisible to customers, as the various stakeholders request neutral packaging. If a product is available from a number of different inventories, Stockly’s algorithm will decide where to source it based on price, distance to customer and service quality.

Stockly was part of Foundry Paris Consumer Industry Program.

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In San Francisco, Funding Announcement, CRM & Customer Experience

FindMine Closes New Venture Round

FindMine, the leader in AI-powered dynamic content creation for brands, announced that it has closed a new venture capital funding round. Led by XSeed Capital and Underscore VC, this investment supplements a previous seed round and brings total capital investment in FindMine to $9.9 million.

Proceeds from the investment will be used to accelerate go-to-market activities and advance development of FindMine’s AI-powered content engine. Driven by predictive intelligence and merchant sales data, FindMine helps brands articulate their unique points of view to increase revenue and inventory performance across multiple sales channels – including e-commerce, email campaigns and targeted messaging, advertising and social media campaigns, and in-store applications such as kiosks, personal shopper programs and sales associates platforms.

By focusing on the content bottleneck, FindMine has created an entirely new category that addresses current shortcomings in the personalization and customer data platform (CDP) markets. The current personalization landscape has done a great job at carving out one-to-one communication channels with consumers based on their personal data. But it puts the onus on the brand to come up with content to share, resulting in the same small amount of assets being sent to every consumer/segment because marketing teams cannot create bespoke editorial content for every consumer. FindMine’s technology allows marketers to showcase unique, curated shoppable assets to every single segment and customer to improve top-line revenue with larger shopping carts and longer, more profitable customer lifecycles. Merchants use FindMine to improve bottom-line profitability and increase gross margins thanks to more effective inventory and logistics management.

“The current personalization process is broken, and one-to-one, persona-based marketing simply does not scale, because the industry forgot about one big piece of the equation: the content. We’re changing the game with AI-powered automation that can create visual, shoppable assets in milliseconds,” commented FindMine CEO Michelle Bacharach. “We’re excited about this investment because it means that we can continue to grow our platform’s ability to create highly-produced and differentiated editorial content out of thin air – empowering brands and retailers to maintain visibility with customers and other key audiences while driving both revenue and loyalty.”

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In Paris, Funding Announcement, Business Technology Platform

Oslo-based foodtech company TotalCtrl receives investment from Newday

TotalCtrl, an Oslo-based food waste prevention software company, announced recently that it has received a significant investment from Norwegian investment company Newday.. Besides Newday, existing investors, including Loyal. VC, also invested. The company says it will use the funds to accelerate its growth nationally and internationally.

TotalCtrl is a foodtech company that leverages its Inventory Management System to help the food industry optimise the planning, purchasing, and use of food inventory by providing data-driven insights and decision support to make fact-based and sustainable choices.

The company works with Halden municipality, Nordic Choice, and Bergstadens hotel – which can show good results in food waste reduction and improved profitability.

Further, TotalCtrl is a certified B corp company, which means it maintains the highest standards in social and environmental impact globally.

“Today is a big day for us at TotalCtrl. The fact that Newday, through a comprehensive process, has chosen to invest significant amounts and not least to contribute important experience, expertise, and passion – means that we can now take the company to a new level. Moreover, Newday’s investment means that TotalCtrl now has the muscle to grow”, says Charlotte Aschim, CEO of TotalCtrl.

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In Funding Announcement, HR & People Engagement

Talent Development Platform GrowthSpace Announces $25 Million in Series B Funding

GrowthSpace, the world’s first outcome-focused talent development platform, today announced $25 million in Series B funding led by Zeev Ventures. Existing investors M12 (Microsoft’s venture fund) and Vertex Ventures participated in this round, which brings the total amount raised to $44 million.

“We’re thrilled with the Series B investment led by Oren Zeev, that enables us to continue partnering with hundreds of forward-thinking companies looking to strengthen investments in the future of their employees, who will be able to drive business KPIs and impact performance through our outcome focused talent development platform,” stated Omer Glass, CEO and Cofounder of GrowthSpace. “The demand for our solutions is strong as we achieved a 5x ARR growth in the last 12 months. Additionally, we have built a network of 1,500 experts in over 50 countries, and look forward to expanding our reach and impact even further.”

The funds will be used to scale global operations to help meet the rapidly accelerating demand of the G2 category leader. The GrowthSpace talent development platform connects employees to relevant experts at scale, solving a major challenge in a $360* billion+ market.  As a market leader in supporting employee professional growth, Growthspace platform understands the challenge of an individual or a group and leverages sophisticated algorithms to match them with a proven, relevant expert for a development sprint. This can then be implemented dynamically and at scale, across an entire organization.

The platform can be implemented modularly to address specific requirements or set up as a comprehensive solution, enabling companies to plan and execute various talent development programs. Customers can utilize individual and group coaching, mentoring (internal & external), training, workshops, and lectures. GrowthSpace enables HR and organizational development executives to dynamically allocate resources and funds between different types of programs based on corporate goals and people requirements. This enables a centralized wallet powering a decentralized system that can be driven by each individual and team.

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In Tokyo, Funding Announcement, CRM & Customer Experience

ChatBook, developing chatbot and marketing automation tool, acquired by Monex Group

ChatBook, providing the automated marketing solution under the same name utilizing chatbot, has been acquired by Japan’s leading FinTech conglomerate Monex Group（TSE:8698). Monex acquired all stakes in ChatBook for an undisclosed sum.

Chatbook’s most recent funding was a pre-series A round in December of 2019 (securing 100 million yen, about $920,000 in the exchange rate at the time) where Monex Ventures, the VC arm of Monex Group, participated in the investment. Japanese startup database Initial reported ChatBook was valued at 712 million yen (about $6.6 million) at the time.

Chatbook was co-founded in September of 2016 (named Hect as its start) by Maiko Kojima who formerly worked for Prime Again (now known as Prime) as CFO/COO. The firm has been chosen for various accelerator programs so far; the first batch of the Code Public program in 2016, Accelerate course of FbStart which is a developer support program by Facebook in 2017 and the first batch of AI Accelerator organized by the major job information provider Dip.

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In Funding Announcement, Business Technology Platform, Paris

Milk Moovement Raises $20 Million USD To Transform the Dairy Industry’s Supply Chain

Milk Moovement, a leading cloud-based dairy supply chain software company, today announced the closing of a $20 million USD Series A round led by VMG Catalyst, the venture capital firm that invests in technology powering the next generation of retail and consumer businesses. The new funding will help accelerate product development and adoption of Milk Moovement among leading dairy businesses in North America.

The over $600 billion global dairy industry has yet to experience a major digital transformation, and the finite delivery windows of a perishable product and constantly shifting consumer preferences make the industry ripe for disruption. Milk Moovement’s technology platform brings the industry from pen-to-paper and legacy systems to the cloud – creating full supply chain visibility for dairy farmers and their distribution partners to track and route shipments in real-time, optimize delivery schedules, and ultimately create a significant decrease in food waste and loss of profits.

“We constantly seek out the best and brightest talent to join us as we build market-leading products and partner with dairy industry leaders,” said CEO and Co-Founder Robert Forsythe. “This latest round of funding is a major win for our employees and investors, but most importantly it allows us to support our incredible partners in getting the right milk to the right place at the right time.”

“VMG Catalyst immediately saw the value Milk Moovement brings to the dairy industry, in particular given a heightened focus on the fragility of global supply chains and the corresponding impact on consumer goods,” said Carle Stenmark, General Partner at VMG Catalyst. “Real-time data transparency is critical for managing perishables and provides tremendous benefit to all the constituents in the dairy value chain. We’re looking forward to seeing even broader adoption of the company’s innovative software platform, and the positive change it creates for the industry.”

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In Funding Announcement

Pexapark secures €8m in Series B funding

This round began in late 2021, and brings Pexapark’s total Series B funding to €14 million, and its total equity investment to €19 million, accelerating its growth in the global renewable energy market.   The funding round, formally announced this month, has seen S&P Global Commodity Insights, which includes S&P’s Platts price benchmarks, and Fluence, an energy storage and digital applications leader, join existing Series A and B investors Encavis, RP Global and BayWa re Energy Ventures in backing the fast-growing business.

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In Funding Announcement, Supply Chain Management

Atlanta food waste management startup Goodr raises $8M

Atlanta food rescue startup Goodr Inc. has raised $8 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, likely the single largest investment round for the 5-year-old company.

As part of the raise, the company also received debt financing from Atlanta Emerging Markets, Inc., a community development entity created by economic development agency Invest Atlanta, for $300,000.

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In Singapore, Funding Announcement

Delivery Hero Ventures backs Staple’s seed round

Staple, a SaaS data management firm based in Singapore, has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Delivery Hero Ventures.

The company, founded in 2018 by its CEO Ben Stein and Josh Kettlewell, helps businesses automate document processing using AI.

According to Stein, Staple’s software interprets and reorganizes data, helping companies deal with large volumes of unstructured information such as transactional documents and tax filings when communicating with other organizations.

The firm currently serves a diverse set of enterprises – financial institutions, online grocery retailers, and professional services firms.

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In Funding Announcement, Supply Chain Management, Shanghai

SAP.iO Foundry Shanghai’s “Intelligent Manufacturing” cohort startup SunwayLand completes Financing

On June 10th 2022, SAP.iO Foundry Shanghai “Intelligent Manufacturing” cohort startup SunwayLand completed a financing round of 200 million yuan, led by Hangzhou Golden Investment, followed by Cornerstone Fund, SDIC, etc. This financing will be mainly used for product R&D iteration and market expansion, and seize opportunities for digital transformation and localization alternatives.

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In Funding Announcement, Business Technology Platform

Data lineage platform Manta raises $35M to help companies map data flows

Manta, a data lineage platform that helps enterprises understand and visualize the flow of information through the organization, has raised $35 million in a series B round of funding.

The raise comes as companies across the industrial spectrum struggle under a growing deluge of data, with countless siloed systems from SaaS applications to data lakes making it difficult to derive any kind of meaningful insights. Manta, for its part, tracks data from its origin through its entire flow to consumption, bringing visibility to the “where,” “how” and “what” of their data assets.

“Data management has undergone a massive transformation in the past decade, with data infrastructure growing in complexity, evolving into data ecosystems with thousands of components aimed at one goal — derive the most value from your data to inform critical business decisions,” Manta founder and CEO Tomas Kratky told VentureBeat.

Manta sits in the middle of every application in an organization’s tech stack, automatically scanning and mapping all data pipelines and data transformations — this will include data sources such as SaaS apps, data warehouses, data integration tools (i.e., ETL and ELT), APIs, Excel documents, databases and more.

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In San Francisco, Funding Announcement, Network & Spend Management

Hotailors rebrands to WorkTrips, bags €23M investment

Travel Manager, the owner of corporate booking tool Hotailors, has landed €23 million in fresh funding. The investment in the Poland-based company has come from DC24 ASI, a previous investor in Hotailors. The funding will go toward rebranding Hotailors to WorkTrips.com as well as boosting its presence in existing markets and extending the platform to new markets such as the U.S. as well as the Middle East and North Africa.

Filip Bloch, co-founder and CEO of Hotailors, says: “We managed to survive the most difficult pandemic period for the industry. It was a time of major redundancies and restructuring among agents specializing in business travel. We used this time to expand our sales team, develop our technology and IT department and strengthen our visibility.

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In Supply Chain Management, Funding Announcement, Bangalore

ECommerce Tech Company Saara Inc Raises Seed Funding from 021 Capital

Saara Inc, an eCommerce technology company that addresses the issue of high product returns for online brands, has announced the closure of a seed funding round led by 021 Capital with additional participation from 9Unicorns and Lets Venture.

According to Crunchbase, South Asian venture capital firm 021 Capital has made 21 investments to date and has helped several startups expand, build a strong team and infrastructure and strengthen the supply chain ecosystem.

“One of the major challenges that the eCommerce industry faces are high returns. We are taking a unique approach using AI-ML that improves the bottom-line of businesses by reducing returns, helps them meet sustainability goals, and reduces their overhead costs. With this capital from our investors, Saara will continue to assist direct-to-consumer brands increase their profitability, introduce more market-disrupting products to build a stronger ecosystem,” said Sachin Garg, Saara CEO and Founder.

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In Funding Announcement

London-based Emitwise pulls in €9 million for its AI-driven carbon accounting software

Climate tech startup Emitwise has closed its Series A funding round with a €9 million investment. The London-based startup is on a mission to accelerate the rapid decarbonisation of the economy and become the standard for carbon management processes.

The funding was led by Xplorer Capital with participation from Outsized Ventures, True Ventures, and ArcTern Ventures. This comes after a €5.4 million boost in May 2021.

In the landscape of increasing awareness of the importance of reducing carbon emissions and embedding greener practices in business approaches, Emitwise, launched in 2019, is an AI-driven carbon management platform that empowers companies to automatically measure, report and reduce their carbon footprint across their operations and supply chain. The aim is to future-proof businesses for a zero-carbon world.

Businesses are coming under sustained pressure from investors, regulators, customers and stakeholders to take action and they urgently need to understand their emissions and how to drive them down if they’re to remain competitive in years to come. To have the most significant impact, Emitwise is targeting the largest emitters – in the manufacturing and industrial sectors – first.

Mauro Cozzi, CEO and Co-Founder of Emitwise, said: “Significantly reducing carbon is both a planetary and business imperative. With businesses under ever-increasing scrutiny, the need for accurate and accessible emissions data is critical. Emitwise democratizes carbon information across a business’ supply chain so that decision-makers at every level can work towards all-out transformation. Our product has been designed to address customers’ pain points around data collection, transparency and analysis, and enables those in the highest polluting sectors to make critical decisions at a micro level.” 

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In Funding Announcement, Bangalore

ECommerce Tech Company Saara Inc Raises Seed Funding from 021 Capital

Saara Inc, a California-based eCommerce technology company, has raised seed funding led by 021 Capital and witnessed additional participation from 9Unicorns and Lets Venture.

The funds will be utilized by Saara to expand its geographic footprint globally, provide a one-stop solution to online brands for all their returns and exchange-related requirements, product development, and acquire global talent to add to its leadership roles.

Saara is an AI-powered solution that helps eCommerce businesses become economically and environmentally more sustainable by reducing and automating product returns.

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