Naspers Ventures, the corporate venture capital subsidiary of media and e-commerce group Naspers, led a $14.4m series A round on Wednesday for US-based leisure equipment rental service Joymode.
The round included undisclosed existing investors and follows a $3m seed round in late 2016 led by Homebrew and backed by Lowercase Capital, Founders Collective, Collaborative Fund, TenOneTen Ventures, Slow Ventures, Sherpa Ventures and angel investors Scott Belsky and Emil Michael.
Joymode leases high-value equipment for specialised leisure events such as camping, big-screen movie nights or children’s parties that would otherwise be too expensive for users to buy. It has curated a range of specialised events for which it supplies everything required.
The series A proceeds will be used to increase the company’s headcount along with the range of curated experiences it offers. Joe Fernandez, Joymode’s founder and CEO, also founded Klout, the social media analytics provider acquired by Lithium Technologies for $200m in 2014.
Mike Katz, head of US investments for Naspers Ventures, has joined Joymode’s board of directors. He said: “We are seeing a generational shift, particularly in space-starved urban areas around the globe – people are renting not buying.
“However, no one is effectively enabling that shift across the trillion-dollar recreation space, so the potential for Joymode is almost unlimited.”