Blue Apron, a recipe and fresh ingredient delivery service, has secured $135 million in funding led by Fidelity Management and Research Company. The cash will be used to scale the company’s network of farms, suppliers and fulfillment centers across the country. Existing investors also participated in this round. “Our mission is to make incredible home cooking accessible to everyone. This financing will allow us to further improve the efficiency of our model, from sourcing to fulfillment, in order to bring our customers a level of quality that has never been available at scale before,” said Blue Apron Co-Founder and CEO Matt Salzberg.
PropertyGuru, a Singapore-based property listing website, has received a $175 million investment from TPG, Emtek Group and Square Peg Capital. The company will use the funds to expand in Southeast Asia. “PropertyGuru has built its track record on a vision of consumer-centric innovation that empowers people to make better property decisions. We will capitalise on this investment to tap into the Southeast Asia property market potential and developments in the digital space to further our regional agenda,” said Steve Melhuish, CEO and co-founder of PropertyGuru.
Swiggy, a Bangalore-based food delivery service, has raised $16.5 million in funding as it looks to take on the Indian market. The company, which launched last year, has hired its own delivery fleet to allow young, working professionals to order meals faster and easier. The round was led by Norwest Venture Partners, with participation from Accel Partners and SAIF Partners.
Cloud-based call center software provider Talkdesk has raised $15 million in Series A financing, led by DFJ. Storm Ventures, a previous backer, also participated. “Today’s consumers are used to instant appdriven communications, but most cloudbased call center solutions do not provide the functionality necessary for companies to meet their rising expectations for service. As such, companies are looking for a more progressive call center technology that provides relevant realtime customer information so they can deliver an exceptionally personalized experience,” said Tiago Paiva, founder and CEO of Talkdesk. “We developed Talkdesk to address the needs of this $20B market. We accomplished this by making it simple for companies to deploy a robust cloudbased call center software solution that provides contextual information about their customers, without the complexity or high cost associated with implementation.”