Auctionata secures $45m Series C financing round

Auctionata, a Berlin-based company that videostreams live auctions for the sale of fine art and antiques, has secured $45 million in Series C financing, as it continues its push to build out its platform. Leading the round was MCI Management, with additional participation coming from Hearst Ventures, HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, e.ventures, and Yuan Capital, among others. Auctionata plans to add garden pieces, diamonds, and real estate to its current offerings in the near future. “Since the launch of the weekly live stream auctions in May 2013, Auctionata has grown considerably and has successfully positioned itself among the global leaders for online auctions of art, antiques and luxury collectibles. In the future Auctionata will focus on efficient growth and thereby lay the ground for both organic and non-organic category and geographic expansion,” Auctionata’s founder and CEO Alexander Zacke said.

WebRTC (real-time communications) company CafeX has raised $21 million from Illuminate Ventures and Intel Capital. “In just a few short years, CafeX solutions have been adopted by some of the world’s largest banking institutions, leading US based insurance companies, and major customer relationship management (CRM) platform providers. We plan to use this new injection of funding to penetrate new markets and accelerate our pace of innovation,” said CafeX CEO Rami Musallam in a press release. WebRTC refers to browser-to-browser applications that support voice calling, video conferencing, and other forms of web-based telecommunications.

LimeRoad, a fashion scrapbooking site targeted at Indian women, has raised $30 million from Tiger Global, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Matrix Partners India. All three investors had previously funded the New Delhi-based company. LimeRoad has now raised $60 million since 2012, and touts the over 1.5 million scrapbooks that have been uploaded to its site. The enthusiasm for LimeRoad is in keeping with a more general bullishness towards Asian e-commerce companies.

Chinese online education service Yuantiku has received $60 million from China Media Capital, New Horizon Capital, IDG Capital Partners, and Matrix Partners China to the tune of a reported $360 million valuation. Yuantiku specializes in preparatory material for the National College Entrance Exam and professional exams like those for careers in law, accounting, and China’s civil service.