Series A
Cloud application and mobile device compliance company Sookasa has debuted from stealth, deployed Sookasa Cloud Compliance Service, and raised a Series A funding round. Reports put the investment at $5 million. Accel Partners led the round, which saw contributions from existing seed investors; among them: First Round Capital, SV Angel and angel funders. The Mountain View-based company is also backed by Andreessen Horowitz, according to its LinkedIn.
Funding
Somo, called the biggest independent worldwide mobile solutions company, has gained $5.5 million in follow-on funding, according to a press release. MMC Ventures (encompassing the MMC London Fund) and other private backers invested. The London company serves customers such as British Gas, Tesco and De Beers.
New Delhi-based messenger hike has revealed a fresh investment from BSB (Bharti SoftBank) valued at $14 million. “We’ve gone 5M to 15M in just 9 months and over 80% of the app’s users are under the age of 25 and majority of its users are from India,” the company said in a blog post. Hike seeks to end the year as the first-ranked messaging platform for the youth, the post goes on.
San Francisco-based ShopTap has offered nearly $8 million in securities and gained more than $5.8 million. Three investors are listed as participating so far. ShopTap is the company behind The Hunt, a platform for identifying where to purchase products and more that calls itself “the cure for outfit envy.”
M&A
Los Angeles-based AwesomenessTV, a teen-focused media company, will purchase YouTube multi-channel network Big Frame, according to a press release. Big Frame, also based in Los Angeles, leverages 300 channels and garners 3.4 billion views. Together, the companies will serve 80 million subscribers “and close to a billion views a month,” according to a press release.
Norcross, Georgia-based vertical search company RentPath, which serves apartment and home renters, has picked up San Francisco’s rental platform Lovely. The latter company is the “first mobile-powered end-to-end rental marketplace where renters can search, apply and pay rent directly from their mobile device and the web,” according to a release. The deal comes to $13 million in cash. RentPath is part of TPG’s portfolio.