Key deals of the week (November 16-22)

According to a study by scientists from Linnaeus University in Sweden, air travelers who travel frequently account for 50% of all CO2 emissions. Writes about this The Guardian. According to study author Stefan Gessling, frequent flyers travel by airplane about 35 thousand miles (56 thousand km) per year, which is equivalent to three long-distance flights and one short-distance flight per month. In 2018, only 11% of the world's people traveled by plane, 4% of them flew abroad. The largest carbon footprint among developed countries was left by air passengers from the United States. According to the study, it was higher than the residents of the UK, Japan, Germany and Australia combined.

Scientists suggest China is the second-largest carbon producer, but it did not provide data for the study. However, its air footprint is probably only a fifth of the American one, Gessling said.

On average, in 2018, North Americans flew 50 times more kilometers than Africans, 10 times more than Asia-Pacific, and 7.5 times more than Hispanics.

The contribution of global aviation to the climate crisis grew rapidly before the pandemic - emissions jumped 32% between 2013 and 2018. The number of flights was cut in half during the pandemic, but the industry is projected to return to previous levels by 2024. Scientists have estimated the cost of climate damage caused by aviation in 2018 at $ 100 billion.

Small deals (up to $ 15 million)

Collaboration tools

• November 16, 2020. Undock, a startup whose solution helps organize, coordinate and conduct meetings, announced raising $ 1.6 million from Lightship Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and others. While Undock is a Chrome add-on that allows users to see the free time of group members, whether users have Undock or not, the data is taken from email. The company plans to launch the full version in Q1 2021, which will include video conferencing functionality. The main difference with Undock is that it focuses on the mutual availability of users (not just the personal availability of each team member) and does it right in the mail client.

Fitness

• November 17, 2020. The service with video tutorials for online fitness classes Motify attracted the first external investment: $ 3 million in a seed round from Grishin Robotics and others. Motify was launched in April 2020. Motify shoots video tutorials on its own, and trainers are rewarded based on the number of seconds of their programs watched. In early October 2020, the service launched personal trainings with trainers. One hour of such training costs from 449 rubles. More than 1,500 trainers cooperate with the service, 350 of them have already joined personal trainings.

HRTech

• November 18, 2020. Advisable startup raised $ 3 million from Digital Horizon, Frontline Ventures, FJ Labs and others. Advisable Marketplace helps companies find, screen and hire marketers, SMMs, content managers and other professionals with at least five years of experience. Now on the platform you can find performers working remotely from around the world. The cost of an hour of their work varies from $ 50 to $ 150. The service offers more than 600 types of tasks that freelancers can solve to promote a customer's project.

EdTech

• November 18, 2020. GoStudent, developer of a tutoring platform, raised € 5 million ($ 6 million) from DN Capital and Left Lane Capital. This is in addition to Round A (€ 8.3 million) that GoStudent raised in June 2020. GoStudent uses AI to help students find tutors around the world for individual or group lessons. All lessons are taught through the GoStudent platform. The company offers subscriptions for 6, 12 and 24 months. There are 2,000+ active repeaters on the platform. 100+ thousand classes are held monthly through GoStudent. The total amount of attracted investments of the company is € 16 million ($ 19 million).

• November 21, 2020. Startup Allright.io raised $ 5 million from Genesis Investments, Flashpoint, TMT Investments, Terra VC and the investor of previous years Mikhail Lyalin. Allright.io is developing an online English language school for children from 4 years of age and plans to use the funds raised to introduce artificial intelligence into the educational process. According to Allright.io's own data, there are 10 thousand permanent students in the online school, and about 50 thousand students study each month lessons. Allright.io startup was founded in 2017. The service earns on commissions. Classes for Russian-speaking students cost from 250 rubles for 25 minutes (50 individual lessons for 25 thousand) or from 450 rubles for 55 minutes (from 45 thousand for 50 lessons). Lessons in a group of up to five people cost from 225 rubles (4,500 rubles for 20 lessons).

Foodtech

• November 18, 2020. Farmstead, which delivers groceries from its warehouses, raised $ 7.9 million from Aidenlair Capital, Gelt VC, Maple VC and others. Farmstead also sells warehouse optimization software for other grocery delivery services. The startup claims that they managed to reduce the number of write-offs by 3-4 times. Farmstead helps retailers who don't have online sales yet start shipping groceries. Farmstead plans to expand into 15-30 new markets throughout the year. The company was founded in 2016. According to Crunchbase, the startup's total investment raised is $ 15 million.

Retail

• November 19, 2020. Afresh, a grocery store manager, has raised $ 13 million from Food Retail Ventures, Endeavors, Maersk Growth and Baseline Ventures. The estimate has not been disclosed, however, according to various sources, it amounted to more than $ 100 million. Afresh's clients include Fresh Thyme Market, WinCo Foods and Heinen's. Afresh solutions optimize fresh food operations. Afresh analyzes customer purchase data and predicts product demand, taking into account various factors. Managers can then use the platform to order as many fresh produce as they need. According to Afresh, with their solution, stores are able to reduce product write-offs by 25 +%.

Medium deals (from $ 15 million to $ 75 million)

Cloud computing

• November 16, 2020. UK-based startup Harbr, which develops a platform for secure data transfer between companies, raised $ 38.5 million in Round A from Dawn Capital and Tiger Global Management. The startup plans to spend the received investment on hiring personnel and R&D. Almost all of the company's clients are from the USA. Harbr's clients include Moody’s Analytics, WinterCorp, and various government agencies. The total amount of attracted investments Harbr - $ 50 + million.

AdTech

• November 16, 2020. Zeotap, a developer of solutions for collecting, organizing and analyzing user data, raised $ 18.5 million from SignalFire. This is in addition to Round C, which was raised in July 2020 for an estimated $ 158 million (post-money). Zeotap offers solutions in several areas. First, the startup created a platform that helps collect existing customer data in one place. The second area is a solution for identifying users by phone numbers, email, home address, web page views, etc. The startup currently operates in 14 markets. The startup's main customers are marketing agencies, brands and data providers.

HealthTech

• November 16, 2020. Heart rate-based heart rate technology developer AliveCor has raised $ 65 million from Omron, Khosla Ventures, WP Global Partners, Qualcomm Ventures and Bold Capital Partners. AliveCor offers a variety of Kardia-branded devices, including a smart phone case and a small device (the size of a credit card), each of which can take an ECG. The readings from the devices are analyzed by the AI. The readings can also be sent to the attending physician. The price of the devices ranges from $ 99 to $ 150. According to Crunchbase, AliveCor's total investment raised is $ 154.3 million.

FinTech

• Nov 17, 2020. Paddle, a startup helping SaaS company process payments, manage subscriptions, and more, has raised $ 68 million from FTV Capital and others. Rather than bundling various services from third-party providers, SaaS companies can use Paddle as a single platform from which they can access payments, invoice, manage subscriptions, comply with tax laws, detect fraudulent activities, and more. According to Paddle, the company has over 2,000 customers worldwide. According to Crunchbase, Paddle's total investment raised is $ 93.3 million.

Social Networks

• October 18, 2020. French startup Yubo, developing a social network, raised $ 47.5 million from Idinvest Partners, Iris Capital and others. Yubo is a social network that wants to change the current trend in social networks - users cannot follow other members and cannot like their posts. Bloggers are now starting to dominate other social networks. Yubo wants to avoid this. The company wants to help users meet other people, play games, etc. The target audience of the service is people under 25 years old. The company has 40 million users. Yubo monetization consists of paid subscriptions and in-app purchases. The startup partners include Snap.

Automation Tools

• November 18, 2020. The American system for analyzing the emotions of the interlocutor during a telephone call Cogito raised $ 25 million. Goldman Sachs Growth Equity, Salesforce Ventures and other investors led the round of investments. Cogito plans to invest in the development and launch of new products. Cogito has raised over $ 138 million since its founding in 2007. The Cogito system measures speech energy, tempo, tone and other metrics. Operators can change the tactics of the conversation depending on this data. For example, if the agent speaks too fast, the system will prompt him to slow down or ask the customer a question. The pandemic has increased the number of support calls, and AI-powered call center platforms can help operators work under heavy workloads.

EdTech

• November 20, 2020. Winter Capital Partners invested in Skyeng Online School of English and Mathematics. The round, closed in October 2020, was also attended by the current shareholder of the online platform Baring Vostok. Skyeng's customer base doubled in 2020, 50% above expectations. Now 15 thousand teachers are registered on the site, who conduct classes for 120 thousand students. Baring Vostok bought a minority stake in the project in 2018 when the company was valued at $ 100 million.In 2020, Forbes included Skyeng in the list of the most expensive companies on the Russian Internet: the online school took 13th place out of 20 with an estimate of $ 130 million.

Large deals ($ 75 + million)

Sales Tools

• November 16, 2020. MindTickle, a startup helping small and medium-sized businesses improve their sales process, has raised $ 100 million from SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Norwest Venture Partners, Accel Partners, Qualcomm Ventures and others. The estimate has not been disclosed, however, according to various sources, it was $ 500 million. MindTickle allows companies to train and improve the skills of their sales managers. The startup uses role-playing techniques to help employees work through a variety of situations that might arise with potential customers. MindTickle also provides feedback on calls made by employees. MindTickle's clients include MongoDB, Nutanix, Qualtrics, Procore, Square, Janssen, Cloudera, Dexcom, Merck & Co. and Benetton Group. Planned revenue of MIndTickle in 2020 - $ 30 + million.'

Fitness

• November 16, 2020. Strava, an app company for runners and cyclists, raised $ 110 million in Series F from TCV, Sequoia, Dragoneer, Madrone Capital Partners, Jackson Square Ventures and Go4it Capital. Strava was founded in 2009. The service helps users track and analyze indicators of physical activity (running, cycling, walking, etc.), as well as share results and compete with other users. Strava claims that its audience has grown by more than 2 million new "athletes" (as the company calls its users) in a month and reached 70 million users in 195 countries.

Mobility

• November 17, 2020. Gojek's multiservice platform raised $ 150 million from Telkomsel, Indonesia's largest telecommunications company. Gojek offers various services: taxi, food delivery, payment system, cleaning, etc. The company has 170 million users. Earlier in 2020, Gojek raised an estimated $ 10 billion in investment. According to Crunchbase, Gojek's total investment raised is $ 4.8 billion. Gojek's investors include Facebook, Google, PayPal and Tencent.

Aerospace

• November 17, 2020. American startup Relativity Space has raised $ 500 million from Tiger Global Management and Fidelity for an estimated $ 2.3 billion. Relativity Space is using 3D printing, machine learning and automation to reduce the cost and speed up the assembly of launch vehicles to several days or weeks, not years. The company has yet to complete any rocket launches, but plans to launch its first mission in late 2021. In the previous round, the company raised $ 140 million to build a 3D-printing rocket factory. This helped her finish work on Terran-1. Relativity Space has signed commercial launch contracts with four major satellite operators and a government contract with NASA-Lockheed.

FinTech

• November 18, 2020. Quid, which provides loans to employees of IT companies against their shares, has raised $ 320 million from Oaktree Capital, Davidson Kempner and others. Quid has already issued loans to employees of 24 companies, including Unity, Palantir, Crowdstrike, Uber, and Lyft. Quid's goal is to find 30 companies that may go public soon. Quid selects companies based on their growth rate, valuation, and other factors. Quid startup was founded by two partners of the Troy Capital fund. Quid receives a flat commission of 7% per year on the amount the person borrows. The amount given out depends on how many shares the employee has in the company.

E-Commerce

• November 19, 2020. German startup SellerX, which focuses on buying businesses selling their goods on Amazon, has raised $ 118 million (€ 100 million) in shares and debt from Cherry Ventures, Felix Capital and TriplePoint Capital and others. This is the first outside investment for SellerX. The company focuses on businesses that offer household goods, pet supplies, garden supplies, baby products, and more. The startup SellerX has acquired one business so far. The run rate for revenue by the end of the year is $ 20 million.

Cybersecurity

• November 19, 2020. Forter, an online retailer that helps prevent fraudulent activities, announced a $ 125 million raise from Bessemer Venture Partners, Felix Capital, Sequoia Capital and others for an estimated $ 1.3 billion. Forter works with banks and online payment providers to detect and prevent identity theft, credit card fraud, etc. When a customer visits a website, Forter tracks their actions, such as which pages they visit, which links they click on, and so on. Forter's AI creates a picture of the customer, and then when the customer is sent to the checkout page, Forter can flag their actions as potentially fraudulent. The company's clients include Priceline, Delivery.com, Hugo Boss and TGI Fridays.