XL Innovate, the venture capital arm of insurance firm XL Catlin, made a “significant investment” in Lemonade, a US-based startup that claims it is set to be the world’s first peer-to-peer insurance carrier, on Tuesday. Lemonade raised $13m in a December 2015 seed round that included venture capital firm Sequoia Capital and VC fund Aleph. XL Innovate managing partner Tom Hutton, whose other deals include Embroker, New Energy Risk, Notion, and Slice Labs, has taken a board seat at the startup and had a Q&A with Blue Dun.
Biopharmaceutical company BioLineRx and VC firm I-Bridge Capital agreed yesterday to each provide $1m in seed funding to a joint venture called iPharma that will develop therapeutic drug candidates primarily in Israel to serve the Chinese market. BioLineRx will screen and locate promising drug candidates that iPharma will then license in order to develop more fully, and the JV intends to raise funding from Chinese investors once it has built a big enough pipeline.
Recruitment services provider Seek has invested $2m in South Africa-based online services marketplace One Africa Media (OAM) to increase its share of the company to 34.6%, TechCabal reported on Tuesday, citing Seek’s 2016 annual report. The investment, which took place in June, followed $20m of funding in 2013 that gave Australia-headquartered Seek a 25% stake, and another $10m in 2015 that pushed its share up to 30.6%.
InsiteVR, a US-based startup developing virtual reality technology for use in the architecture and construction industries, has raised $1.5m in seed funding from investors including CyberAgent Ventures and Gree VR Fund, respective subsidiaries of internet services firm CyberAgent and digital media company Gree, TechCrunch has reported. Other investors in the round included Y Combinator, Rothenberg Ventures and angel investors Tracy Young, Ralph Gootee and Greg Castle.
Maumee Ventures, the corporate venturing vehicle of agribusiness The Andersons, led a $1.5m seed round for US-based food safety startup SafeTraces yesterday. SafeTraces is developing invisible, tasteless and edible DNA barcodes that can be applied directly to food in order to prove the source and safety of food products, and it plans to bring its first product to market by the end of this year.
Germany-based fashion price comparison portal StyleLounge has secured a seven-figure euro sum (€1=$1.10) from e-commerce holding company Rocket Internet, TA Ventures, Axivate Capital and Astutia Ventures, Gründerszene has reported. StyleLounge raised a reported $2.5m from TA Ventures, Axivate, Astutia, undisclosed family offices and Felix Jahn, formerly a managing director of Rocket Internet, in August 2015.
Mobile technology provider TigerSpike is among the investors in a $400,000 seed round for Bambu, a Singapore-based developer of robo-adviser technology for businesses, Tech in Asia reported on Monday. The round also featured undisclosed angel investors and will support hiring, product development and the pursuit of more clients in East and Southeast Asia as it prepares to launch a private banking product in partnership with media and data firm Thomson Reuters.
Telecom group Digi Telecommunications has agreed to invest a total of RM250m ($60,000) in three Malaysia-based startups through its accelerator, Digi Accelerate, E27 reported on Monday. The startups in question are recreational activity booking platform Local Usher, on-demand cooking gas delivery service GrabGas and survey creation portal developer Vase.