- Indian food delivery: Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) invested $150M in Indian food delivery service Tomato. The investment valued Zomato at more than $1B and brought total funding up to $593.8M. Alibaba’s Ant Financial payment affiliate also bought $50M in Zomato shares in a secondary purchases.
- Zomato operates in 24 countries and has over 1.4M customers.
- Competitors: UberEats (Private:UBER) has a presence in India. Homegrown competitors include Swiggy ($255.5M in funding, Naspers backing), Foodpanda (acquired by Delivery Hero (Private:DHERO) in 2016), and Just Eat (OTC:JSTLF).
- Selective insurance: Alphabet’s (GOOG, GOOGL) GV participated in a $110M round for enterprise health management company Collective Health. The round brought total funding up to $230M.
- Collective Health’s platform lets employers pick what health insurance aspects they want for their employees for a more cost-efficient, à la carte experience.
- The company serves more than 120K individuals (compared to 30K in 2015) with clients including Palantir, eBay, and SpaceX.
- The round will go to “accelerated development” of the platform and new hires.
- Work share: WeWork (Private:VWORK) rival Industrious raised $80M in a round led by Riverwood Capital and Fifth Wall Ventures. The round brought total funding up to $142M. Other investors include Alrai, Outlook, and Rabina Properties.
- Industrious calls itself “a premium workplace platform, blending five-star service and stunning.” Premium perks include nursing rooms, concierges, and fitness centers.
- Competitor: WeWork dominates the market with $6.9B in funding after a $4.4B investment from SoftBank (OTCPK:SFTBF, OTCPK:SFTBY) last summer.
- AI-powered WLAN: GV also participated in a $46M Series C round in AI-powered wireless network company Mist. Kleiner Perkins led the round, which brought total funding to $88M. Other participants included Lightspeed Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, NTT DOCOMO Ventures, and Dimension Data.
- Mist began shipping its Mist Learning WLAN in 2016 and says sales grew 1000% in the first year. Customers totaled 250 at the end of last year.
- Mist will use the funding to grow sales, marketing, and research.
- Competitors: Wireless LAN companies include Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) and Ubiquiti Networks (NASDAQ:UBNT).
- Self-driving shuttles: BMW (OTCPK:BMWYY) i Ventures and Toyota (NYSE:TM) AI were involved in a $11.5M seed round for autonomous electric shuttle startup May Mobility.
- The Ann Arbor-based May already has self-driving shuttles (with humans behind the wheel) in operation in downtown Detroit. The shuttles are meant to travel short routes with a mapped 10-square-mile area.
- Competition: The self-driving vehicle field is crowded, but direct shuttle competitors include Navy, Local Motors, and Auto Robotics.
- Previously: Tencent invests $115M in competitor of Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) Music, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) Prime Music (Feb. 28)
- Previously: Bloomberg: Alibaba buying Baidu's stake in delivery startup (Feb. 26)
- Now read: Tech Dividend Showdown: Cisco Vs. IBM (NYSE:IBM)
Original article