Elevate Brands banks $250M to roll up third-party merchants selling on Amazon’s marketplace

The Amazon roll-up play — where one company creates economies of scale by buying up and consolidating multiple smaller third-party merchants that sell their goods via Amazon’s marketplace — continues to be a strong e-commerce trend, and in the latest development, one of the hopefu

Gembah raises $11M to ‘democratize product innovation’

Gembah's mission statement is a deceptively simple one. The Austin-based company says it's looking to “democratize product innovation by drastically lowering barriers to entry for creation of new products.” In that respect, at least, it's not so dissimilar from various startup initi

Indian financial services firm MobiKwik looks to raise $255 million in IPO

Gurgaon-based mobile wallet service firm MobiKwik plans to raise up to $255 million in an initial public offering, becoming the latest Indian startup to explore the public markets. The 12-year-old firm, which counts Sequoia Capital India and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority among its investors and ha

VU raises $12M to remove cybersecurity friction from digital experiences

Pretty soon, people won't have to provide a fingerprint or a driver license to prove their identity — if VU has its way. The Argentina-based fraud and identity protection company announced $12 million in Series B funding Monday from backers including software developer Globant, as well as Agr

Dovetail, the venture studio that has worked with startups like Afterpay, is raising a new fund

"attachment_2175946" aria-describedby="" style="width: 4032px">Dovetail co-founders Ash Fogelberg and Nick Frandsen Based in Sydney and Auckland, Dovetail is a full-service venture studio that works closely with founders who have a great idea, but may lack technical backgrounds. Dovetail helps them

Growth marketing roundup: Cool SaaS, marketing lies, VR ads and more

One might think that a short week due to a U.S. holiday calls for a short weekly recap, but we have plenty to share about growth marketing from our coverage over the week. With the help of your recommendations, this week we were able to interview Peep Laja and Lucy Heskins, and publish multiple gue

Extra Crunch roundup: NS1 EC-1, Pakistan’s tech ecosystem, SPACs bonanza

Did you see the viral videos of yesterday’s flooding in New York City subways? In one, riders waded through brown, waist-deep water; another video showed a cascade rushing down a flight of stairs to a subway platform where passengers waited for a train. Infrastructure doesn

Didomi raises $40 million to help you manage customer consent

French startup Didomi has raised a $40 million Series B funding round led by Elephant and Breega. The company manages consent flows for web publishers and app developers. Didomi is already doing well in Europe with billions of consent interactions per month — it plans to expand to the U.S. with t

Temasek, Warburg Pincus and Bhavish Aggarwal invest $500 million in Ola

Temasek and an affiliate of Warburg Pincus are investing $500 million in Indian ride-hailing giant Ola, the Bangalore-headquartered startup said in a short statement Friday. Ola co-founder and chief executive Bhavish Aggarwal is also participating in the new investment, the startup said. This is th

PowerZ raises $8.3 million for its video game focused on education

French startup PowerZ has raised another $8.3 million (€7 million at today's exchange rate) including $1.2 million (€1 million) in debt — the rest is a traditional equity round. The company is both an edtech startup and a video game studio with an ambitious goal — it wants to build a ga

Miami twins raise $18M for Lula, an insurance infrastructure upstart

Lula, a Miami-based insurance infrastructure startup, announced today it has raised $18 million in a Series A round of funding. Founders Fund and Khosla Ventures co-led the round, which also included participation from SoftBank’s SB Opportunity Fund, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, Shrug Capi

Cryptocurrency company Circle to go public in SPAC deal

Circle has announced that it plans to become a public company. The cryptocurrency company will merge with Concord Acquisition Corp, a SPAC. Circle is better known as one of the founding members of the Centre consortium with Coinbase. Along with other crypto partners, they have issued USD Coin (USDC

Popshop Live raises about $20M at a $100M valuation for its livestream shopping platform for hipsters

Legacy TV services like HSN and QVC may have put live shopping shows on the map for consumers, but livestream commerce got a completely new boost of life in the pandemic, with retailers and e-commerce leviathans tapping a perfect storm of the craze for video entertainment, a trend (or even municipa

Swiss Post acquires e2e encrypted cloud services provider, Tresorit

Swiss Post, the state-owned mail delivery firm which became a private limited company in 2013, diversifying into logistics, finance, transport and more (including dabbling in drone delivery) while retaining its role as Switzerland’s national postal service, has acquired a majority stake in Sw