SparkLabs Global Ventures’ Technology and Internet Market Bi-Monthly Review November 14, 2014

Bi-monthly Highlights

Global Trends

• Online games expected to hit US$13B in 2014, with at least US$946M from League of Legends alone Mobile may be the hottest game market, but massively multiplayer online games on the PC are expected to grow from US$11 billion in 2014 to US$13 billion by 2017, according to market researcher SuperData Research. It wrote that MMO market has changed dramatically in revenue, player preferences, and the size of its potential audience. One of the clear winners from the changes is the free-to-play League of Legends, a multiplayer online battle arena game (MOBA). League of Legends has already generated $946 million so far in 2014, accounting for 11.9% of the overall market. But SuperData said it is worth noting that Wargaming’s World of Tanks, which is No. 5 on the rankings of MMOs with $369 million in revenue, monetizes much better on a smaller user base. The success of MOBA titles tells us the market is shifting to free-to-play, but the traditional subscription game World of Warcraft from Blizzard still generated $728 million this year from subscription revenues. Online games are 21% of the overall digital games market. By looking at the spending habits of 37 million digital gamers, SuperData’s latest data shows that incumbent titles like SmileGate’s Crossfire ($897M) and Nexon’s Dungeon Fighter ($891M) are holding on to their leadership positions, and Valve’s Dota 2, a MOBA with $136 million in revenues, is coming on strong. Asia remains the biggest market for free-to-play MMOs, with $4.2 billion in revenues. That compares to $3.1 billion in North America and $2.1 billion in Europe.

• Home Automation Gadgets Are Leading Explosive Growth In The Consumer 'Internet Of Things' Market Homes around the world are going to become smarter and more connected over the next five years. Overall, a fair number of mainstream consumers still don't fully understand what connected-home devices are and how they work. However, adoption and awareness is still high for such a new category. We expect the devices to become more prevalent in the next two years, when growth will peak. According to a recent report on the connected home, BI Intelligence, connected-home device shipments will grow at a compound annual rate of 67% over the next five years, much faster than smartphone or tablet device growth, and hit 1.8 billion units shipped in 2019. Connected- home devices include all smart appliances (washers, dryers, refrigerators, etc.), safety and security systems (internet-connected sensors, monitors, cameras, and alarm systems), and energy equipment like smart thermostats and smart lighting. The connected-home category will make up about 25% of shipments within the broader Internet of Things category this year, but that share will increase gradually to roughly 27% in 2019 based on our forecast, as growth in other IoT areas picks up. Connected-home device sales will drive over US$61 billion in revenue this year. That number will climb at a 52% compound annual growth rate to reach $490 billion in 2019.

SparkLabs Global Ventures (http://www.sparklabsglobal.com) is a global seed-stage fund with partners in Silicon Valley, Chicago, London Tel Aviv, Singapore, and Seoul. 1 SparkLabs Global Ventures’ Technology and Internet Market Bi-Monthly Review November 14, 2014

Asia Pacific China • Chinese fitness wearable maker Codoon secures US$30M funding Codoon, the smart wearable maker from China famous for cloning the Jawbone Up, has raised a US$30 million series B funding round from SIG and SBCVC. The new investment comes just half a year after Codoon picked up a US$10 million series A round from CITIC Capital. The startup offers a redesigned wristband in addition to the lookalike, along with a couple other activity tracking gadgets that look different but essentially do the same thing as the bracelets – track steps taken and monitor sleep. Then there’s this smart kitchen scale and heart rate monitor. Each of the gadgets syncs with the user’s smartphone via Bluetooth. This latest investment will go toward developing Codoon’s new social network for its device users, which aims to help incentivize exercise. Codoon also offers an API for developers to create apps to work with its devices and, conversely, a firmware ROM that can be used to run similar smart wearables. While the price of Codoon’s gadgets undercuts Fitbit, it will have a much more difficult time in China thanks to smartphone maker Xiaomi’s entrance to the fitness market. Earlier this year, Xiaomi launched an activity tracking wristband that offers many of the same functions as Codoon and Fitbit for only RMB 79 (US$13). In contrast, Codoon’s bands cost RMB 399 (US$65) and RMB 499 (US$82).

• Tencent-backed on-demand laundry app gets US$20M funding just 4 months after seed round Edaixi, the on-demand laundry app that Tencent invested a US$3.2 million seed round of funding into in July, has already raised a series A round worth US$20 million. This latest investment comes from Partners and SIG. The doorstep pickup laundry service – available via native app, WeChat service account, and website – is backed by longtime franchise of Chinese laundromats, Rongchang. Edaixi’s main service charges a flat RMB 99 (US$16) rate per each of its custom laundry bags, but it will also clean individual pieces of clothing, shoes, furniture, air conditioners, and handbags. CEO Lu Wenyong told QQ Tech that Edaixi sees 10,000 orders per day in Beijing, mostly through WeChat. Most of its customers are young people in their late 20s and early 30s. This latest round of funding will be used to recruit more delivery drivers and scale up operations to more cities. The startup is still limited to Beijing for the time being, but plans to head into Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Tianjin. The money will also go toward user subsidies, which will help it undercut competition. Edaixi is up against at least half a dozen like-minded apps, including 24tidy, which raised a sizable seed round earlier this year.

• This Uber for local deliveries in China just secured US$15 million from Tencent Renren Kuaidi, a crowdsourced delivery system with no relation to the struggling social network of a similar name, announced today it secured a US$15 million series A round of funding from Tencent and Banyan Fund. Renren Kuaidi, which literally translates to “Everyone Express,” let’s anyone who meets the eligibility requirements sign up to be a courier. Those requirements include real-name authentication, binding a bank card, a smartphone with a phone number, and a photo. Couriers can choose to deliver packages by bike, scooter, car, bus, or even on foot. The startup specializes in delivery for boutique stores and local lifestyle products like flowers, cake, coffee, gifts, and food. It’s not about to turn China’s logistics industry on its head, but it could make a valuable impact on last-mile and local delivery. It could be especially useful during times of peak demand for local couriers that need to temporarily bolster their staff. Using a similar model to Uber, Renren Kuaidi doesn’t own its own fleet of staff and vehicles. Couriers sign up to use the , and Renren takes a cut of their pay per delivery. Customers can book the nearest courier on demand. Founded in 2011, the startup now operates in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Chengdu. This latest round of funding will go toward hiring new personnel and paying for operating expenses.

• China’s top gay hook-up app attracts US$30 million in funding from DCM China’s gay hook-up app, Blued, has secured US$30 million in series B funding led by DCM, the startup has confirmed. This dwarfs the app’s series A round, which amounted to US$1.6 million in February. The financials are not the only rocketing numbers. Blued, which is aimed at China’s gay men, now claims to have 15 million registered users. That’s up from three million towards the beginning of the year. The startup’s founders cite reports that China has as many as 70 million gay men, despite a conservative culture that discourages both men and women from straying away from building up a traditional family. Blued’s users are mostly concentrated around China’s largest cities – Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou – and an increasing proportion of them are China’s “post-90s” generation. Nearly a quarter of that user base is monthly active users – that’s 3.5 million. That compares quite strongly against China’s top flirting app, Momo, which is aimed at straight men and women. Momo has 52 million

SparkLabs Global Ventures (http://www.sparklabsglobal.com) is a global seed-stage fund with partners in Silicon Valley, Chicago, London Tel Aviv, Singapore, and Seoul. 2 SparkLabs Global Ventures’ Technology and Internet Market Bi-Monthly Review November 14, 2014

active users at the last count from a total registered base of over 150 million. Blued is up against hook-up apps such as Jackd, Zank, and Hornet.

• Tencent makes a play for China’s generation with US$20M investment in Blink Tencent has made a new social play in the same vein as Snapchat to appease China’s “post-90s” youths. The web giant made a fresh US$20 million series A investment into Blink, a new photo sharing and messaging app out of China. Sequoia Capital, H Capital, ZhenFund, and Innovation Works also participated in the round, according to Techweb. Tencent became king of China’s online social messaging sphere with the mass adoption of QQ Messenger and kept the throne when it unleashed WeChat. But even though QQ earlier this year boasted a record 200 million concurrent users and WeChat’s growth is only now starting to show signs of saturation, the web giant is actively looking for the next big thing for young people who no longer think WeChat is cool. Blink works like this: the camera comes on as soon as the app is opened. Thumbnail images of all the user’s friends the right side. Click one of them to snap a photo or hold to take a 16-second video, then add some MS Paint-style graffiti, text, and an audio message. When the recipients get it, they can add on to the photo with their own embellishments and send it back. Techweb reports the app claims 200,000 active users. Tencent contributed to US-based Snapchat’s US$60 million funding round last year.

• Chinese mobile ad platform Lomark raises US$30M in Series B investment China’s digital advertising market is expected to be worth US$31.9 billion by 2018. Lomark, a Chinese mobile advertising solutions platform headquartered in Shenzhen, has raised US$30 million in Series B funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB). ABC Capital, Shenzhen Fortune , and DFJ DragonFund were other investors. The company, founded in 2010, has offices in 45 cities across China. It focusses on local markets with a ‘cutting-edge technology model to realise the depth of excavation and precise audience analysis’. Brands are expected to spend US$18.6 billion on digital advertising in China this year — an increase of nearly 23 per cent on 2013. That could grow to US$31.9 billion by 2018, according to Socintel360 (cited in the same report). Huge amounts of venture capital are being poured into China this year. Just last week, Intel announced US$28 million into technology startups in the country from its ‘China Smart Device Innovation Fund’. Spending on digital advertising in China this year is being led by a core group of players, which include predictable industry giants such as , Alibaba, Google China, Tencent, Sina and Youku.

Korea • Korea’s SparkLabs to launch second accelerator specifically for ‘Internet of Things’ startups Sparklabs, the Seoul-based startup accelerator announced that it is opening a second accelerator specifically for ‘Internet of Thing’ startup. Set to launch in early 2015, the as-yet unnamed accelerator will be based out of South Korea’s Songdo International Business District. That six square kilometer bit of land was once a giant pile of sand, but thanks to a US$35 billion effort from the Korean government, the territory is slowly transforming into ultra- connected, ultra-automated, ultra-green city of the future. Lee says that this new accelerator will operate much like the original one in Seoul, wherein batches of about eight teams from Korea and abroad work from SparkLabs’ offices for a six month period, culminating with a day of presentations in front of investors. SparkLabs intends on making investments under US$100,000 in exchange for equity in the teams that join. However, all startups specializing in connected devices will join the new accelerator, while SparkLabs’ flagship accelerator will focus on “online and healthcare startups.”

• Bilingual foodie app from Korea, MangoPlate snags funding from Softbank Korean restaurant discovery app MangoPlate announced it secured an undisclosed series A round of funding from Softbank Ventures Korea. Available in both English and Korean, MangoPlate’s database covers 200,000 restaurants across the country, searchable with personalized restaurant recommendations based on your location and places you’ve eaten at before. Users can follow other members to see what their friends are eating. The app’s biggest competitor isn’t another foodie startup, but actually South Korea’s biggest search engine, Naver. Naver touts a much larger database of reviews and recommendations, but their authenticity is often questionable. Posting fake reviews and paying off food bloggers is a common under-the-table practice. To curb this practice on its own platform, MangoPlate has developed a recommendation algorithm that it says will better aggregate more reliable data from user behavior and even other social networks. It combines data between users with the same tastes to build a validated profile for tastes and preferences. Additionally, MangoPlate promises not to support sponsored reviews. MangoPlate CEO Kim Dae-Woong says a solid local market leader has not yet emerged, and he intends to fill that position. (Graduate of our affiliated startup accelerator, SparkLabs (www.sparklabs.co.kr), and a portfolio company of ours)

SparkLabs Global Ventures (http://www.sparklabsglobal.com) is a global seed-stage fund with partners in Silicon Valley, Chicago, London Tel Aviv, Singapore, and Seoul. 3 SparkLabs Global Ventures’ Technology and Internet Market Bi-Monthly Review November 14, 2014

• Korean Adaptive Learning Platform KnowRe Secures US$6.8 Million From Softbank Knowre, a Korean education technology company with a cloud-based adaptive learning program for secondary mathematics has just secured US$6.8 million in a funding round led by Softbank Ventures. KTB Network Co., LTD, Partners Investment, SparkLabs Global Ventures and a number of other investors joined the round. KnowRe launched in March 2014 after a year-long beta period in which the company hosted a successful pilot program involving dozens of middle and high schools in the US. David Joo, CEO of KnowRe said of the new funding, that it would be used “to scale our distribution in the US on the heels of strong demand from schools and districts since our launch.” The company also plans to extend product development and offerings for Asia. “Gaining the support and validation of such well-respected partners is a proud achievement for KnowRe,” added YJ Kim, Co-CEO of KnowRe. “The investment enables us to broaden our mission of personalizing education for each individual student while providing teachers and schools with the data and tools to help deliver differentiated instruction to all of their students,” he added. (Graduate of our affiliated startup accelerator, SparkLabs (www.sparklabs.co.kr), and a portfolio company of ours)

Japan • Chinese and Japanese startups take notice – there is another US$132M coming your way After seeing heavyweights like Rakuten, Gree, and SoftBank establish multiple venture capital funds targeting Southeast Asian startups, Japanese entrepreneurs might be wondering if their time to shine had passed. Infinity Venture Partners, one of the longest active venture capital firms in Japan, hushed some of that speculation with the announcement of a hefty fund. For starters, the firm has finalized US$32 million in new funding. It expects to close an additional US$100 million in the first half of 2015. Familiar faces like Recruit Holdings, Daiwa Securities, and Mixi all contributed cash to the fund. The money will reach early stage startups in Japan as well as China. Infinity Venture Partners is perhaps best known for holding semi-annual tech conferences in Japan. Its ability to put on a good event should not overshadow the firm’s general investing acumen, however. Its previous five year fund – for US$128 million – netted a three times return. The company cites Groupon Japan, Japanese personal finance tool Freee, and Chinese startup news service 36kr among its hits. With the fall 2014 edition of its popular conference just a few weeks away, industry observers should keep an eye out for the first investments from the new fund.

• If Japan’s SmartNews is just another news app, why is it valued over $100M? Japanese news apps are engaging in a war that shows no signs of stopping. SmartNews, a strong contender to emerge victorious from the fray is already looking to bolster its position with an influx of non-Japanese users. The company launched an English app earlier this month and has taken up residence in the Digital Garage office in San Francisco. With five million total downloads, SmartNews ranks behind Gunosy (six million) but ahead of Antenna (four million). That might all seem like chump change compared to Flipboard’s more than 100 million users, but news and curation startups are attracting outsized attention in Japan now. For years, Yahoo Japan has been the go- to website of choice for millions of Japanese. In the mobile space, which the new apps are attacking, Yahoo Japan is pulling in 38 million monthly active users. Those users treat Yahoo Japan as their portal to the entire web, accessing news, weather, sports, ecommerce, and more. The company’s status as a port of entry has lead to numerous advertising tie-ups and a healthy bottom line. Yahoo Japan generated JPY 80.8 billion (US$753 million) from advertising last year.

India • SoftBank says US$837M investment is start of big plans for India’s startup economy SoftBank announced two major investments in India-based startups that total up to one big bet on the future of the country’s digital economy. “Since SoftBank’s foundation, our mission has been to contribute to people’s lives through the Information Revolution,” said Masayoshi Son, chair and chief executive of SoftBank Corp., in a press release. “We believe India is at a turning point in its development and have confidence that India will grow strongly over the next decade. As part of this belief, we intend to deploy significant capital in India over the next few years to support development of the market.” The company’s venture arm, SoftBank Internet and Media, Inc. (SIMI), made its biggest investment of US$627 million in SnapDeal, India’s largest online marketplace. The backing will make SoftBank the largest investor in SnapDeal, which now claims to have 25 million registered users and more than 50,000 business sellers. SoftBank also invested $210 million in Ola Cabs, a car-sharing service that has 33,000 vehicles registered to use its service across 19 cities in India.

SparkLabs Global Ventures (http://www.sparklabsglobal.com) is a global seed-stage fund with partners in Silicon Valley, Chicago, London Tel Aviv, Singapore, and Seoul. 4 SparkLabs Global Ventures’ Technology and Internet Market Bi-Monthly Review November 14, 2014

• Gadget comparison site 91mobiles raises US$1M round led by India Quotient Gurgaon-based price comparison site 91mobiles has secured a US$1 million in pre-series A investment from a group of investors led by India Quotient. The funding will be used to grow its team, ramp up R&D, launch an Android app, and add more gadget categories to the site. Founded in mid-2010 by Bharanidharan Viswanathan and Nitin Mathur, 91mobiles is a price comparison and research site for mobile devices. Users can input their ideal price range and specs for phones they’re looking to buy, and they’ll be directed to a list of devices that meet their criteria. Alternatively, they search for a specific device and 91mobiles will list the ecommerce sites with the best deal. 91mobiles earns revenue through referral links to big ecommerce retailers like Amazon, Flipkart, and eBay. The team claims to receive 7.5 million visitors per month, and 250,000 visitors per day. 91mobiles is gearing up to compete with like-minded Indian research portals such as Helion Ventures and Accel Partners- backed MySmartPrice, and 500 Startups-backed PriceBaba, which focuses on brick-and-mortar retailers.

• Zoomcar raises US$8 million in funding round led by Sequoia Capital Zoomcar, the first self-drive car rental company from India, has raised US$8 million in a funding round led by Sequoia Capital. Several new investors including former Infosys CFO Mohandas Pai, Abhay Jain of the Manipal Group and other individuals participated in this round. Many prior investors also increased their stake in the company, including Empire Angels, FundersClub, Basset Investment Group, and funds advised by Triangle Growth Partners. The investment will be used for scaling the team, technological development and expansion to new cities over the next one year. The car rental company started in Bangalore in February 2013 with seven vehicles at one location. It now claims to have over 250 cars at about 40 locations across Bangalore and Pune, with plans to expand to Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, Goa, as well as other cities in India. Zoomcar is unusual in the Indian car- rental space because it allows customers to drive themselves. Over 95 per cent of the industry is chauffeur-driven, and self-drive options exist in the unlicensed and unregulated informal economy, shared an official release. Malaysia • Malaysian government selects Fatfish Ventures for startup co-investment programme Fatfish Internet Group, a Singapore and Australia based internet venture accelerator has announced that its Malaysian subsidiary, Fatfish Ventures has been selected as a co-investment partner by the Malaysian Government’s Cradle Fund. Cradle Fund, a non-profit which was started in 2003, is part of the Malaysian Government’s Ministry of Finance and manages US$45 million for investing in tech and innovation startups. It is the first official partnership programme Cradle has established to co-invest in startup opportunities. Fatfish will identify and qualify startups in Malaysia under the programme with Cradle matching each investment made by Fatfish on a one-for-one basis up to US$150,000. Fatfish will decide the terms of the investment and there is no limit on the number of startups that Fatfish can choose to lead under the programme. Cradle has reportedly allocated US$748,000 for its co-investment venture with Fatfish. Fatfish Ventures is one of four investment partners selected by Cradle to run the programme. The others are CoEnt Venture Partners, Crystal Horse Investments, and OSK Ventures International.

• GrabTaxi puts the heat on Uber with additional funding of US$65 million GrabTaxi – known as MyTeksi in its native Malaysia – raised a series C funding round, which brings the taxi app’s total funding in the last 12 months to US$90 million. US-based Tiger Global Management led the round, with existing investors GGV Capital, Vertex Venture Holdings, and Qunar participating. Hillhouse Capital Management also joined in as a new investor. MyTeksi general manager Adelene Foo stated that the app already raised two rounds of funding from global and regional investors of around US$25 million previously, which means that the ballpark figure for their current round is probably around US$65 million. The funds will be used to continue GrabTaxi’s regional expansion, as well as to up their service standards. The app runs in 16 cities across Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines.The taxi app has so far recorded over 2.1 million downloads, with 400,000 monthly active users. Its closest competitor, Rocket Internet’s EasyTaxi, raised US$40 million in its latest series D funding round. The two startups go head-to-head in numerous cities across Southeast Asia, and are also battling Uber and UberX as the American company makes in-roads in the region. Indonesia • Indonesian edtech startup HarukaEdu raises series A funding from CyberAgent Ventures HarukaEdu, an Indonesian startup focused on online education, announced a series A investment of an undisclosed amount from Japan-based CyberAgent Ventures. The company released a statement saying that the new funds will be used to recruit team members necessary for the development of HarukaEdu’s infrastructure, featured courses, and online training. “We are targeting people who are already working and want to continue their education to obtain

SparkLabs Global Ventures (http://www.sparklabsglobal.com) is a global seed-stage fund with partners in Silicon Valley, Chicago, London Tel Aviv, Singapore, and Seoul. 5 SparkLabs Global Ventures’ Technology and Internet Market Bi-Monthly Review November 14, 2014

a degree of S1 or S2. Currently their options are limited to evening or weekend classes. Unfortunately, there are some disadvantages of those options,” says Tovan Krisdianto, co-founder of HarukaEdu. “Online courses provide flexibility where students can learn anytime and anywhere.” In addition to providing its own online courses, HarukaEdu provides other academic institutions with IT solutions and infrastructure for implement online learning. HarukaEdu is currently working with the London School of Public Relations, STM Labora, and the Entrepreneur University of Indonesia.

• With US$9M in fresh funding, Brainly hopes to narrow education gaps in Indonesia Indonesia is a nation comprised of thousands of separate islands, so proving a baseline of quality for the education system has always been a challenge, especially in an emerging economy where major infrastructural problems have yet to be resolved. Poland-based edtech startup Brainly aims to tackle this problem and narrow education gaps across the archipelago. Brainly is a social network for students, where anyone, anywhere in the world, can log in to help someone else with homework assignments. Earlier this month, Brainly announced a US$9 million series A investment led by US-based General Catalyst Partners. In 2012, European entrepreneurs Michal Borkowski, Tomasz Kraus, and Lukasz Haluch founded Brainly with US$ 500,000 from Berlin-based Point Nine Capital and a group of angel investors on a mission to encourage students to learn and explore education collaboratively. According to Widiantoro, the company has seen enough traction worldwide to justify a strong move into emerging markets like Indonesia. Philippines • Japanese epayment giant sinks series A funding into Philippines’ Dragonpay Japanese epayment giant sinks series A funding into Philippines' Dragonpay. Yet another Japanese web company cast a big vote of confidence in Southeast Asia today as GMO Internet Group ploughed series A funding into Dragonpay, a Philippine startup that’s trying to make it easier for people to pay for things online. The Japanese firm runs GMO Payment Gateway, so it can lend some expertise to its latest investment. The cash comes from the GMO Global Payment Fund, but the amount isn’t disclosed. Ecommerce is still at a fairly early and formative stage in the Philippines and epayments are a major issue. Ryu Muramatsu, a founding partner at GMO Venture Partners, adds: “In the Philippines, 80% of the total population doesn’t possess a bank account and these people need to pay and buy everything offline.” That’s why Dragonpay focuses on prepaid cards, available at over 10,000 stores – such as supermarkets or gas stations – that can then be used for shopping online. It makes epayment as easy as mobile top-ups. Dragonpay is one of many startups across Southeast Asia that are trying to solve the multifarious online payment problems across the region. One of the largest is Thailand-based 2C2P, which has also expanded to the Philippines. GMO has also backed 2C2P.

• CashCashPinoy gets US$2M funding for daily deals battle Daily deals site CashCashPinoy announced that it has secured US$2 million in funding to aid its growth as one of the top ecommerce destinations in the Philippines. The investment comes from Singapore-based Hera Capital. CashCashPinoy CEO Frederic Levy says that the site’s 1.5 million registered shoppers are now making an average of 35,000 transactions per month, resulting in about 23,000 monthly deliveries. About 37 % of the Philippines’ 98 million citizens are on the Internet, according to data from the World Bank, so it’s a market with plenty of room for growth. CashCashPinoy is primarily battling Groupon, MetroDeal, eBay Deals, and LivingSocial’s Ensogo in the country. Today Levy also unveiled a new set of tools for CashCashPinoy’s merchants, called REVO, that promises to be “the complete ecommerce flow” for its sellers, covering everything from product sourcing to after sales support. The new backend system allows for the addition of new plugins at any time. One example is the support for merchants using Zendesk to deal with issues faced by customers. Singapore • Two names, two countries, 120,000 cars, and US$60M in funding – iCarsClub gets a fresh round Car rental startup iCarsClub and PPzuche, which spans Singapore and mainland China, has raised US$60 million in series B funding. The investment comes from IDG Capital Partners and MorningSide Ventures. It comes just four months after a first major round worth US$10 million. iCarsClub focuses on Singapore-based rentals, while PPzuche has now grown to cover 12 Chinese cities. It first expanded to the country in October last year when it only had cars available in Beijing.The service offers street-side peer-to-peer rentals, similar to US-based RelayRides. Car owners can make money from their cars’ idle time by joining the site and making their car available for rent whenever it’s convenient. Across its two areas, iCarsClub and PPzuche now have over 120,000 private cars available – that’s up from just 300 when the team first got seed funding from Red Dot Ventures and the National Research Foundation in early 2013. Singapore’s government makes car ownership prohibitively expensive

SparkLabs Global Ventures (http://www.sparklabsglobal.com) is a global seed-stage fund with partners in Silicon Valley, Chicago, London Tel Aviv, Singapore, and Seoul. 6 SparkLabs Global Ventures’ Technology and Internet Market Bi-Monthly Review November 14, 2014

and as a result only about 15 % of Singaporeans own a car. That’s a huge opening for iCarsClub and other informal car rental services.

• Singapore startup gets record US$5.6M seed funding to turn your phone number into a URL Singapore-based startup GNum announced it has raised US$5.6 million in seed funding from firm Tembusu Partners. It’s possibly the largest seed round ever raised in the island-state – at least the largest to be made public. GNum is a free online chat service that allows people to connect using a simple URL. So, unlike with , , , or countless other chat apps, there’s no need to sign up or log in. You just need to give the personalized URL to whoever it is you’d like to have call you. The idea is that it gives more privacy, keeping it separate from your social media life. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s more secure. No app is needed, but there’s a very basic GNum app available for Android and iOS. GNum doesn’t use VoIP – unlike Skype – as the startup claims you’ll get better quality using a direct connection. The funding will be used to accelerate GNum’s rollout in Singapore, and subsequent expansion to four other countries in Southeast Asia – Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Following this, GNum will also be launching in the United States, China, Hong Kong, India, and Australia in the near future. The app’s parent company is called GlobalRoam.

United States

• After leaking company data, raises US$120M from Google & Kleiner Perkins at US$1.12B valuation Corporate messaging tool Slack announced that it has closed a US$120 million round led by Google Ventures and Kleiner Perkins. The new round values the company at US$1.12 billion, post funding — a massive valuation for an eight-month-old company. Slack was quick to point this out in its press release: “Having just launched in February, this milestone marks Slack as the fastest growing SaaS company ever.” The company reports that it now has “30,000+ active teams using Slack.” It now has 268,000 daily active users and that its active user base is growing by 3 to 5 % a week. This news follows a recent Slack privacy snafu, in which a “feature” led the service to reveal the internal team names of companies like Google, Apple, and more to the public. Clearly, Slack has rebounded quickly and now expects itself to become “the fastest-ever SaaS company to reach $10 million” in annual recurring revenue. Slack has raised a total of $180 million to date. It is based in San Francisco.

• Vicarious raises another US$12M for ambitious plan to create ‘human-level intelligence in vision’ Artificial intelligence company Vicarious is raising a significant new round from ABB Technology Ventures and others of US$12 million. The new funding is an indication that more investors are buying into the still-young startup’s claims to have a truly revolutionary technology. Vicarious says its algorithms are aimed at achieving “human-level intelligence in vision, language, and motor control,” and it has been focusing first on visual perception. Vicarious claimed in October, 2013 that it had “passed the first Turing Test” by using its vision algorithms to solve login captchas with an accuracy of 90 %. Captchas are the images that contain visually scrambled letters or numbers, usually requiring a human to decipher them since ordinary optical character recognition algorithms won’t work with all the visual “noise.” Vicarious had previously raised $56 million, most recently with a $40 million series B round in March, 2014, from investors including Formation 8, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Ashton Kutcher. Facebook co-founder Dustin Moscovitz sits on the company’s board. It is based in Union City, California.

• Stealth communications startup Keyssa adds Nest CEO Tony Fadell to board, raises US$10.8M Keyssa, a five-year-old stealth startup that holds a patent for “contactless secure communication” tech, announced a US$10.8 million raise in a public company filing. A job listing describes Keyssa as a “well-funded stealth startup working on leading edge connectivity technology and products (ICs and modules) using standard CMOS 60 GHz proprietary IP.” The listing claims Keyssa “is ready to launch products into the market this year.” According to the filing, Keyssa — formerly WaveConnex — has raised a total of $26.4 million over the course of its lengthy, stealthy life and may raise $21.3 million more. Interestingly, the SEC filing names Nest chief and Tony Fadell as a company board member (and potential investor). Public information on Fadell’s involvement with Keyssa is thin, aside from a UCLA site that claims Fadell is the chairman of Keyssa’s board. Given Fadell’s involvement, Keyssa presumably plays a role in the Internet of things trend. The SEC filing also names Techfund Capital partner Jim Whims.

• Jonathan Rothberg’s Butterfly Network has raised US$100M for medical imaging tech Noted biosciences entrepreneur Jonathan Rothberg has a health startup incubator up in Connecticut, and one of its portfolio companies, Butterfly Network, has raised an US$80 million funding round. Butterfly Network, which

SparkLabs Global Ventures (http://www.sparklabsglobal.com) is a global seed-stage fund with partners in Silicon Valley, Chicago, London Tel Aviv, Singapore, and Seoul. 7 SparkLabs Global Ventures’ Technology and Internet Market Bi-Monthly Review November 14, 2014

launched roughly three years ago, is developing a new kind of medical imaging device that will see the human body in “completely new ways,” the company says. Butterfly hopes to collect thousands of images in a database, then use artificial intelligence techniques to a learn new clinical insights from them. The startup may develop non-invasive surgical technology as well, Rothberg told VentureBeat. But that’s the extent of what Rothberg was willing to say about the company’s products and how they might work. Butterfly Network was founded by Rothberg and a group of physicists and engineers from MIT’s Lincoln Laboratories. The new investment money is presumably coming from or through Rothberg’s 4Combinator incubator, but he wouldn’t give specifics. The money will be used to further develop the company’s imaging technology and AI techniques. So far Butterfly has raised a total of $100 million, suggesting that somebody strongly believes the startup’s products will address real market needs.

• ScoreBig raises US$18.3M for its ‘name your price’ ticket marketplace Despite advertising certain prices for event tickets, event presenters and resellers are often willing to sell tickets at lower prices if you make an offer, and ScoreBig puts that to use. The Los Angeles-based company lets customers “name their price” for event tickets and matches them with sellers willing to take their bids. The company announced that it has raised US$18.3 million in new funding that it will use to expand its online and mobile products, lock in new partnerships, and grow its user base. ScoreBig takes advantage of the concept of “market pricing,” meaning a price that’s not advertised, usually lower than the listing and the lowest the seller is willing to accept. Other companies, such as Priceline and Greentoe, which we recently covered, also help customers save money by helping buyers and sellers trade at those prices. ScoreBig says it has special partnerships with event resellers and presenters that give it access to lower, unpublished prices. ScoreBig is able to dynamically match buyers and sellers in order to maximize event attendance and ticket price thanks to its algorithms. Hearst Ventures led the new round, with participation from new and existing investors. ScoreBig was founded in 2009 by Joel Milne and Adam Kanner. The company previously raised $31.2 million in funding.

• Cloud provider Joyent bets the farm on containers, adds US$15M Joyent, a provider of public-cloud infrastructure and software that companies can use to create clouds in their own data centers, announced that it’s brought in US$15 million in new funding. The deal shows investors believe there’s still room for cloud providers other than the big three — Amazon, Google, and Microsoft — even as they become more and more appealing to companies with new features and price cuts. But the new funding also points to the wisdom of the low-level technology Joyent has long used to run multiple applications efficiently on each physical server. Joyent has primarily focused on pushing a SmartOS operating system that uses “zones” for securely running applications, based on Sun’s once-open-source operating system, Solaris. SmartOS skips the sort of virtualization technology that enterprise software company VMware made popular, which uses a hypervisor to create multiple virtual machines for running applications on each server. But while Joyent may have gotten to this solution first, Docker has gotten credit for inventing “container” technology, which packages up application code and can be moved from one server environment to another without tinkering with code. San Francisco-based Joyent started in 2004. It most recently announced funding — an $85 million round — in January 2012. Cofounder Jason Hoffman left his position as chief technology officer in September 2013.

• Capriza, your ticket to mobilizing desktop business apps, raises $27M Apparently it pays to provide tools to simplify enterprise software for mobile consumption. That’s how things look today, with startup Capriza announcing a US$27 million funding round. The startup sells a cloud service that people can use to create mobile versions of complex enterprise applications from vendors like Oracle, SAP, and Salesforce.com. Capriza eliminates the need to mess with new code, data-integration tools, or application programming-interfaces (APIs). The mobile applications, running in HTML5, can work on any type of mobile device. Now Capriza can spend money to bring in more business while continuing to improve the use of back-end applications on any device, said Ty Lim, the startup’s vice president of marketing. The funding also comes just as competition is intensifying. There’s also competition from IBM Worklight, MoNimbus, PowWow, and SkyGiraffe, not to mention efforts by companies to try on their own to make desktop apps mobile-friendly. Capriza has racked up nearly 100 customers, including Dell, DirecTV, Paramount, VMware, and the city of Los Angeles. Palo Alto, Calif.- based Capriza started in 2011 and employs 75 people.

• NantMobile raises US$50M for digital advertising platform One of the cool features in Amazon’s Fire phone is Firefly, which can recognize images, movies, or music in the real world and launch related Web content on your phone. The Los Angeles-based startup NantMobile has a technology platform that can put that capability on any mobile device via an app. The company has raised US$50 million for the platform from an unknown investor or investors, according to an SEC filing. NantMobile’s software platform lets

SparkLabs Global Ventures (http://www.sparklabsglobal.com) is a global seed-stage fund with partners in Silicon Valley, Chicago, London Tel Aviv, Singapore, and Seoul. 8 SparkLabs Global Ventures’ Technology and Internet Market Bi-Monthly Review November 14, 2014

marketers and media outlets bridge the gap between the real and digital worlds. Using the NantMobile app, a user can the camera at a poster, advertisement, or at a piece of product packaging. Then your mobile device will launch some related content, like demonstration video for marketers or extended coverage for media. The app can also listen to music or movies and identify the content, then launch related content. NantMobile is one of two subsidiaries of a parent company called NantWorks, which is run by serial entrepreneur Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong. The other is a health startup called NantBioscience.

• Your social identity is part of the reason Gigya just landed US$35M Social logins — when you’re asked to use your Facebook, LinkedIn, or other social network credentials — are more than just time savers. They’ve become keys to the kingdom of identity, which is why identity management provider Gigya has just scored US$35 million. This brings investment in the company, which helps sites manage social logins, to $104 million. Identity management is now evolving to include payment options, shipping addresses, even — someday — biometric confirmations. In other words, your identity is now way beyond your username and password. It can be everything digital about you, it can be used to initiate and implement a wide range of actions, and, like mobile payment systems or beacons, it is emerging from the digital world into the real world. The new funding will be used for “scaling the organization and international growth,” Salyer said. Currently, the company has seven offices worldwide, with one in Asia on the drawing board. In addition to Intel Capital, investors in the most recent round included Common Fund Capital, Vintage Investment Partners, and existing investors Adobe, Advance Publications, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, Greenspring Associates, and Mayfield Fund.

• Namely grabs US$12M to help you keep your employees happy and organized Human resources company Namely announced today that it has raised US$12 million in a second round of funding. Namely provides tools to manage services such as payroll and benefits, performance management, employee engagement, recruiting, and more. While many other companies in the HR space focus solely on the recruiting piece of talent management, Namely handles all aspects of a company’s interactions with employees. Namely competes with fellow HR companies like TribeHR, Zenefits, Workday, and many others. It now serves more than 20,000 employees from 150 companies, including Birchbox, Slack, Quirky, Rent the Runway, Saatchi & Saatchi, and Warby Parker. Matrix Ventures led the round, with additional participation from True Ventures, Lerer Ventures, and Bullpen Capital. Matrix Partner David Skok will join Namely’s board of directors as part of the deal. Namely was founded in 2012 by Matt Straz and is based in New York City. The company had previously raised $10 million in funding.

Europe

• Finnish studio Small Giant Games raises US$3.1 million The Helsinki, Finland-based mobile developer Small Giant Games has raised US$3.1 million after completing its investment round. It says that the funds will go toward launching its first game and the development of additional works. The mobile gaming market is huge and growing — it should reach $20 billion by the end of this year — and developers from all over the world are jumping into the competitive arena of social and casual gaming. Small Giant Game’s first game is Oddwings Escape, which launches globally on mobile platforms next year. “It’s not possible to succeed in the fiercely competed mobile games market just by copying existing popular games – you need to create new and unparalleled game features and experiences, which shape the existing genres and create entirely new ones,” Small Giant Games chief executive officer Timo Soininen said in a press release sent to GamesBeat. “One of our goals is to raise the quality of character animations in mobile games to a new level. We are thrilled to get experienced investors to back our vision of creating beautiful and engaging multiplayer games with small focused teams.”

• Earlybird leads US$3.5M investment in enterprise source code management startup RhodeCode Berlin-based VC firm Earlybird announced that it is investing US$3.5 million in RhodeCode, a provider of enterprise software file versioning and collaboration solutions. DFJ Esprit has also joined the round which will be used in financing RhodeCode’s growth. The company’s core product, RhodeCode Enterprise, is an increasingly popular, secure software development solution designed for complex, mission-critical programs used by enterprises. Following the investment, the company is expected to strengthen its product development team, to pursue faster growth in $21 billion application lifecycle management market. The company claims more than 95% of increase in sales over the previous quarter, with more than 10,000 organizations across 80 countries using its safe products. Customers include US Navy, Raytheon, US Department of Energy, CA Technologies, Cisco, Samsung etc, according to the press release.

SparkLabs Global Ventures (http://www.sparklabsglobal.com) is a global seed-stage fund with partners in Silicon Valley, Chicago, London Tel Aviv, Singapore, and Seoul. 9 SparkLabs Global Ventures’ Technology and Internet Market Bi-Monthly Review November 14, 2014

• Finnish app Jongla raises about US$4.2 from private investors Helsinki-based instant messaging app Jongla announced the closure of a new around US$4.2 million round of investment from a group of private investors including JSH Capital Oy, Ingman Finance Oy, Kontino Invest Oy and Holdington Ltd Oy. This latest round increases the overall investment in the fast-growing Finnish messaging platform to US$9.1 million. The company says they will use the fresh funds in scaling their business globally as well as improving their technology for better instant messaging. Initially aimed at the youth, Jongla has moved to differentiate itself with some features like interactive stickers and push-to-talk messaging. Last month it launched ‘Channels’, a tool that lets brands and celebrities to engage with fans in real-time via Jongla. Riku Salminen, CEO ofJongla, said “The latest funding round will allow us to continue to develop and extend our cross-platform social messaging service as a platform and firmly place ourselves as a preferred choice in a number of key markets around the world.”

• Yelp Buys Cityvox To Build Out Restaurant And Nightlife Reviews In France Yelp continues with its march across Europe to build up its reach in local listings in the region. The company announced the acquisition of Cityvox, a reviews site in France that focuses on restaurants and nightlife and “providing great consumer insights for businesses ranging from restaurants and brassieres to cinemas and clubs, basically any business falling into the restaurant and nightlife categories,” writes Mike Ghaffary, VP Business & Corporate Development at Yelp in the blog post. And, as Yelp continues to turn up the heat on Google in the regulatory arena in Europe, now as a formal complainant in the EU antitrust-search investigations, some of the logic of why they are getting more vocal in Brussels is getting clearer: it wants to ramp up in Europe, and it doesn’t want to be handicapped right out of the starting gates. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. It is not clear how many users or listings Cityvox had, and it only names one investor in its Crunchbase profile, Frabice Grinda, a very prolific angel investor in Europe, who put in an undisclosed amount back in 2000, the year Cityvox was founded.

• Adtech startup Adsquare picks up US$4.3M in Series A from Munich-based Target Partners and others German adtech firm adsquare announces that they have obtained US$4.3 million in a Series A that includes participation by Target Partners and previous investors. The company says that the new funding will be directed towards “accelerating growth” and funding international expansion, as they continue to develop their core product. The startup previously raised $1.4 from Berlin Ventures and Fruehphasenfonds Brandenburg back in May 2013. The startup, which was founded back in 2012 by the team of Sebastian Doerfel, Tom Laband, and Fritz Richter, aims to help advertisers find relevant potential customers by analyzing billions of data points, based on where the anonymous users happen to be at the time. Marketers are looking to target a certain segment, of course, and the platform allows them to take the data and focus on particular groups (be it business travellers, students, tourists, and so forth).

Israel • Israel’s Meekan gets US$870K in seed fund led by Horizons Ventures Israel-based startup Meekan has secured US$870,000 in seed funding from Horizons Ventures and a few private investors. The round was led by Horizon Ventures with US$750,000 coming from it. Meekan is developing a technology that aims to connect the world’s calendars. The funds will go towards developing a portfolio of products based on Meekan’s patent-pending technology, as well as expanding its R&D and sales workforce. Gilad Novik, CTO, Horizons Ventures said, “Scheduling meetings is a daily task, and it is also often a time-consuming one, especially when different time zones and many parties are involved. Bolstered by the Flexible Time Algorithm, Meekan takes the hassle out of this task, and provides a simple solution to an avoidable inconvenience, allowing us to work more efficiently — it is much more than a productivity or calendar app. We are thrilled with Meekan joining the family at Horizons Labs.” Founded in 2013, the company is continuing to develop its portfolio of products, which includes the iPhone/iPad app and an API for third party developers and online booking services.

SparkLabs Global Ventures (http://www.sparklabsglobal.com) is a global seed-stage fund with partners in Silicon Valley, Chicago, London Tel Aviv, Singapore, and Seoul. 10