Co-Working Giant Secures USD 500 Mn In Series B, FitnessTech Startup ClassPass Raises USD 85 Mn And More…

Here is the startup news roundup from across the globe [23-27 July]

ASIA

Rocket-backed  Zen Rooms gets USD 15 M investment from South Korea’s popular hotel app Yanolja, which receives a non-controlling stake, as confirmed by Zen.  

Pinduoduo, the Chinese budget social e-commerce platform backed by Tencent, often seen as a key rival to Alibaba’s Taobao and JD.com, debuted on Nasdaq exchange and has raised about USD 1.6 B. This stands out as one of the biggest deals of the year for China.    

After a spell of aggressive growth, Chinese bike sharing behemoth Ofo is haulting the ride in many international markets to focus on profitability. It is pulling out of countries, such as Australia, Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, India, and Israel.

Co-working giant WeWork has received USD 500 M for expanding its China business. The Series B round that was led by Trustbridge Partners, values the Chinese subsidiary at USD 5 B. Temasek and SoftBank also contributed to the round.

Facebook stock plunged almost 24% on growth concerns after authorities in China apparently took back their approval for Facebook to set up a subsidiary in the country, where the US firm is eyeing one of its largest growth opportunities.

Singapore’s ODX has pulled in USD 60 M in token pre-sale from Pantera Capital, BlockTower Capital, and Wavemaker Genesis, others. The startup is building a blockchain-based data marketplace to help improve internet access in developing economies.

Japanese messaging app Line has purchased a majority stake in the South Korean game developer NextFloor. It will be combined with Line’s existing games publishing operations to form a new unit called Line Games.

Singapore’s co-living space provider Hmlet has gobbled up HongKong based competitor We R Urban. 

India’s shared workspace provider Awfis has booked USD 20 M funding. Sequoia Capital and Temasek affiliate InnoVen Capital invested in the series C round. 

 EUROPE

Scandit, a Swiss barcode scanning platform for mobile enterprise apps, has raised USD 30 M in a series B round of funding led by Alphabet’s venture capital arm Google Ventures.

Amsterdam and New York-based HR tech startup has raised USD 10.6 M series A funding led by Keen Venture Partners (KEEN) with participation from existing investor, HenQ.

Healx, the Cambridge-based health-tech startup developing breakthrough treatments for rare diseases, has received a USD 10 M in a Series A funding round led by Balderton Capital.

London-based market research company GlobalWebIndex has announced a USD 40 M funding round from New York-based Stripes Group.

USA

Rescale, high-performance cloud computing startup, announced a USD 32 M Series B investment today led by Initialized Capital, Keen Venture Partners, and SineWave Ventures. They join a list of well-known early investors that included Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Paul Graham and  Sam Altaman of Y Combinator, Peter Thiel amongst others.

GrubHub, a publicly listed online food delivery company has acquired Boston based Level-Up in a USD 390 M cash deal. LevelUp is a platform to that allows restaurants to manage digital ordering, payments, and loyalty. 

Guild Education, a Denver, CO-based employee education platform, closed USD 40 M in Series C funding. The round was led by Felicis Ventures. 

Facebook has acquired Isreali enterprise messaging service Redkix, to be integrated into Workplace, the enterprise version of Facebook.  

Cogito, an AI-driven sentiment analysis solution has raked in USD 37 M from Goldman Sachs in a Series C growth equity funding. 

New York-based gym booking app ClassPass has banked USD 85 M in a series D round from Temasek. ClassPass offers a membership plan that allows users to book a range of gym and fitness classes.