A number of investment rounds and acquisitions took place in recent weeks and it’s worth taking note. Below is a recap of some of September’s Israeli tech headlines:
Investment rounds
The startup Tracx, which provides a SaaS solution for tracking and managing marketing campaign on social networks, has received an undisclosed investment from Israeli angel Zohar Gilon. Started in 2008 by Eran Gilad, Yaniv Ben-Arie, Asaf Shtekler and Niv Singer, the company has a headcount of 15 in Tel Aviv and works with Israeli agencies and advertisers.
Innovid raised $4.1 million in a second round led by previous backer Genesis Partners and joined by T-Venture, the venture capital company of Deutsche Telekom. Innovid has developed an interactive pre-roll ad format called iRoll, that encourages users to click on moving objects with the interactive ads before watching the video. Led by Tal Halozin and Zvika Netter, Innovid raised $7.1 million to date and has managed to sign partnerships with some of the web’s leading video publishers.
uTest, the crow sourced QA service on the cloud, raised $13 million in a C Round led by Scale Venture Partners. Previous investors including Longworth Venture Partners
and Egan-Managed Capital also participated in the round, which brings the total funding of uTest to $20.8 million. uTest has established itself as the world’s largest marketplace for software testing services, with over 25,000 testers in over 160 countries. With verticals such as web, gaming, mobile and desktop software, utest has managed to tap into the vast market of companies that don’t have in-house QA teams.
Kenshoo, the SEM automation startup and Sequoia’s darling, has raised a fourth round of $8-10 million from Sequoia. The exact details of the deal were not disclosed. The round is intended to support Kenshoo’s expansion into France, Germany and Asia. According to sources, Kenshoo has been growing 300-400% year over year and it is expanding its activities to include Display Advertising management as well as social network advertising campaigns, in addition to its core market of search text ads. Kenshoo started in 2006 by Izhar Prato (CEO) as well as Alon Schiffer, and Nir Cohen. Previously, Kenshoo raised a round to support its local advertising initiative. [calcalist]
eXelate, a marketplace for behavioural targeting data for advertisers, raised $15 million from Menlo Park Ventures and Carmel Ventures. This is the startup’s second round, coming to a total of $19 million to date. eXelate eXchange was launched in 2008 and includes some of the world’s leading publishers. Founded by CEO Meir (Iri) Zohar, eXalate has offices in New York and Kfar Saba, Israel.
SimpliVT, a new venture in stealth has raised $9.2 from undisclosed investors as it emerged from this SEC filing. The founder of SimpliTV is Doron Kempel, who founded and sold Diligent to IBM with his partner (and now angel), Moshe Yanai. It is known that the company will play in the IT infrastructure space, in competition with XtremIO, which is backed by JVP and Giza. [more here and here]
I'm a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google's first physical hub for startups.
I'm also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we've built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.
