VENTURE CAPITAL MARKET REVIEW ISSUE 13 (NOVEMBER 24-30)

Startup market news you sure don’t want to miss.

STARTUP. Host Analytics Raises $25M
Host Analytics, a company that provides cloud-based financial analytics tools, announced $25M in Series E funding today, and suggested the next logical step for the company is going public. Today’s funding brings their total to date to $77M.

The round was led by Centerview Capital Technology. Also participating were previous investors Advanced Technology Ventures, Next World Capital, StarVest Partners, and Trident Capital.

Host Analytics plays in the financial analysis space and competes with the likes of Tidemark and Anaplan for cloud-based financial planning. All these companies share the common goal of moving modern financial reporting tools from the confines of Excel to the cloud where they can begin to make decisions in closer to real time, rather than dealing with older information that only gives a picture of where the company has been.

STARTUP. Logistic Startup Fluc Raises $2.3 Million
Gathered together, whole bunch of math geeks created Fluc — a food-delivery service that tries to provide better customer service using complex routing algorithms to get food to its customers faster.

With that goal in mind, Fluc raised $2.3 million in seed funding to expand its business and keep moving into new markets. The new financing came from investors that include Sherpa Ventures, WI Harper, Charlie Cheever, Blake Ross, Zhou Hongyi and other angels.

Fluc calls its logistics technology “The Oracle,” based on the Matrix, and co-founder Tim Davis says the back-end platform can typically predict a driver’s moves up to 3-5 deliveries ahead of where they currently are at any given time.

Fluc to date has mostly been operating on the South Bay, working to figure out how to most efficiently make deliveries in what is essentially a suburban market. Its key differentiation isn’t in the restaurants it signs up or the food it delivers, necessarily, but in the routing that it’s built on the back end, which makes more efficient use of its drivers.

Fluc’s cost of delivery is at $6 per order now, but users can now split the bill when ordering multiple items, which reduces the individual price for each person.

STARTUP. Muzik Raises $10M In Funding
Audio accessory startup Muzik is launching its product after two years of design and gearing up production, making the Muzik smart over-ear headphones available to consumers today for $299 and a ship date ahead of the holidays. The headphone maker has also raised an additional $10 million to help bring its product to market.

The smart part of the Muzik headphones revolves around four hot keys, whose function can be customized by a user, and embedded motion sensors that allow for additional input via head movements. Out of the box, Muzik lets you tweet your current track, share it to Facebook, save tracks to a favourites list in the companion app, or text or email your friends via a “speed dial” a user can set up, all automatically just by pressing one of the buttons embedded on the right ear cup.

Muzik Connect, an app for Android and iOS which will ship with the headphones, helps make all of these software features happen, and there’s also a developer platform that Muzik is making available via an open source license.

STARTUP. Jumia Raises $150M For Its African E-Commerce Business
Africa-based e-commerce company Jumia announced it has raised $150 million in new funding. The company confirmed that the round values it at $555 million.

Jumia sells a range of products, from clothes, to electronics, cosmetics and even alcohol. It is active in nine African markets — Cameroon, Egypt, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Uganda, and Tanzania — and also the UK.

The company was founded in 2012 and previously raised $26 million from Summit Partners back in March of last year. Jumia didn’t specific how it will spend the fresh capital, but Jeremy Hodara — co-CEO of Africa Internet Group (AIG), which owns Jumia — said the funding was a validation for the company’s progress.

INVESTMENT. News Corp Makes First Investment In India
U.S. media giant News Corp made news with strategic investments. The company announced its first deal in India: it has paid $30 million for a 25 percent stake in Elara, the startup that runs real estate portal PropTiger.com.

PropTiger.com, which has sold more than $1 billion in property through its platform to date and also offers real estate advice, is not News Corp’s first foray into this segment. The media firm owns Move, which operates Realtor.com in the U.S., and it also has a 62 percent share of REA, which operates Realestate.com.au in Australia.

This investment in PropTiger.com will allow the Indian company to draw on News Corp’s “digital and product expertise” and experience with the other two sites, the media giant said.