A report from The Financial Times suggests that Uber is preparing a $1 billion round of funding in order to crack the Chinese market. Uber currently operates in 11 Chinese cities, and the taxi-hailing app plans to expand into 50 with the new funds. The company has already raised $5 billion to date and is valued at around $50 billion.
India-based pharmaceutical company La Renon Healthcare raised a $16 million Series A round of funding from Sequoia Capital. The company provides products and services for various illnesses and diseases. “We view this partnership with Sequoia as an endorsement of the strength and sustainability of our branded formulations business and validation of our differentiated growth strategy across therapeutic segments,” Pankaj Singh, founder, chairman and CEO of La Renon, said.
BioAtla, a biotech company with a focus on Conditional Active Biologic antibody therapeutics, has raised $30 million from a China-based investor group. The company will use the funds to accelerate its products pipeline. “The $30 million equity investment is a transformative event for BioAtla and our strategy to broadly and rapidly pursue novel therapeutic products based on our patented CAB and other proprietary technologies,” said Jay M. Short, Ph.D., president, chief executive officer and chairman of the board of BioAtla. “Since BioAtla’s founding in 2007, we have utilized our Beijing development and operations capabilities to successfully develop dozens of protein products under contract and shared development. Our drug development experience and expertise in China, the great prospects of the CAB platform, and our strategy of proprietary drug development through defined value inflection points prior to partnering with pharmaceutical companies are attractive features for the investor group.”
WalkMe, a platform that helps guide people through using software and websites, has raised $25 million in an oversubscribed round of funding, TechCrunch reports. The company’s services are used by the likes of eBay and Salesforce and it has attracted $42.5 million in funding to date. The latest round was led by Greenspring Associates, with participation from existing investors Scale Venture Partners, Giza Venture Capital and Gemini Israel Ventures.