Series A
Mobile security vendor NowSecure, formerly known as ViaForensics, has raised $12.5 million in equity financing in a round led by Baird Capital, with additional participation coming from Jump Capital and Math Venture Partners. The Oak Park, IL-based company has grown over 300 percent since 2012 and counts Fortune 1000 companies from the finance, defense, and healthcare sectors among its growing list of customers.
The on-demand cleaning service Helpling has secured $17 million in Series A financing from Mangrove Capital, Phenomen Ventures, Point Nine Capital, and Delivery Hero founder Lukasz Gadowski. The company was incubated just this past March in Berlin by the Samwer brothers and their firm, Rocket Internet. But the business has scaled quickly, as the service is now reportedly available in 150 cities across both Europe and Latin America. True to form when it comes to Rocket Internet companies, Helpling is not the first service of its kind. In the United States, for example, there’s already HomeJoy, Handybokk, and TaskRabbit.
Anticipating that the transportation ecosystem will be connected to the Internet of Things, True Ventures, Union Square Ventures, and Cane Investments have made a collective $4.9 million bet on Veniam, a Mountain View, Calif.-based Wi-Fi technology company. Veniam integrates its technology into municipal buses and other forms of public transportation, transforming them into Wi-Fi hotspots. A successful deployment has already taken place in the city of Porto, Portugal. “We expect Veniam to become a resilient, flexible, and cost effective alternative to cellular networks for connecting people and things on go,” declared a blog post on the USV site, “We’re excited to be along for the ride.”
Series C
Boulder, Colo.-based SendGrid, a purveyor of enterprise email services that sync with web applications, has raised $20 million from Bain Capital Ventures and returning backers Bessemer Venture Partners and the Foundry Group. The five year old company, which completed Boulder’s TechStars program in 2009, has now raised $47.4 million in venture financing.
Growth equity
Uber has hired Goldman Sachs, specifically its private wealth management division, to attract high net worth individuals who might be interested in investing in the ride-sharing technology company. The deal for the Goldman PWM clients would likely be for convertible debt, according to reports, and would be separate from the company’s speculated upcoming $1 billion raise. The latest financing rumors suggest that Uber is being valued at around $40 billion.
Email data analytics company Return Path is the recipient of $35 million in new venture financing from Insight Venture Partners, having previously raised over $60 million from investors like Union Square Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, the Foundry Group, and Sutter Hill Ventures. Founded in 1999, Return Path works with commercial providers to deliver more successful email marketing campaigns.