Platfora, a big data analytics company, has raised $30 million in financing from HSBC and Harmony Partners. Previous backers including Allegis Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Citi Ventures, Cisco, Sutter Hill Ventures and Tenaya Capital also participated in the funding round. “I’m very pleased with what Platfora has been able to achieve in a relatively short amount of time. We’re now the leader in this new class of technology,” said Jason Zintak, CEO, Platfora. “No doubt, 2016 will be our best year yet as the value of Platfora is now proven across many industries and the ROI is obvious.”
NowThis, the media company making short digital videos for mobile and social platforms, has raised $16.2 million in Series D funding led by German media giant Axel Springer. Oak Investments, NBC News Group and Softbank also contributed to the funding round. “We are increasing our share in a promising journalistic start-up that is focusing on the attractive future market of mobile and social video consumption,” said Jens Müffelmann, CEO of Axel Springer Digital Ventures, in a press release.
Clip, the Mexican mobile payments company similar to Square, has raised $8 million in funding led by Alta Venture. American Express and Sierra Venture also participated. Adolfo Babatz, Clip’s co-founder & CEO, says: “Our product is designed from the ground up to satisfy merchant needs in emerging markets. We offer an incredibly simple solution that really helps merchants increase their sales. For example, with Clip, merchants can offer payments in installments to their clients with more than 18 issuers in Mexico. This makes small and medium businesses really competitive in the marketplace.”
Lemonade, a soon-to-be-launched peer-to-peer insurance company, has secured $13 million in a funding round led by Aleph and Sequoia Capital. “Most Americans view insurance as a necessary evil rather than a social good, and that’s something we’d like to change,” said Daniel Schreiber, Lemonade’s CEO. “As a fintech-insurance company, Lemonade is designing around the bureaucracy and conflict that haunt the industry, replacing them with technology and transparency. What makes this exciting is that it requires reinventing the very structure and business model of insurance in ways not available to the legacy insurance carriers.”