Investment Round: Leanplum, Trouva, Choozle, Yotpo, Suggestv, Hostmaker

Investment Round is our fortnightly update on which firms have secured new funding, which areas are seeing the most financing, and who is putting up the cash that enables these companies to keep pushing the capabilities of mobile marketing further.

Leanplum

Leanplum – a mobile marketing and insights platform, which counts among its clients Topshop, Red Bull and Tinder – has closed a $47m (£36m) Series D funding round.

The round was led by Norwest Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors Canaan Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Shasta Ventures.

Leanplum says it will use the funding to further products development in areas such as machine learning, cross-channel automation, and one-to-one personalisation, and fuel international expansion.

Scott Beechuk, partner at Norwest, will join the Leanplum board of directors.

“Mobile has changed the face of marketing, and the industry is undergoing a major transformation,” said Beechuk. “Legacy marketing clouds are built for web and lack the real-time infrastructure to respond to customer needs across channels and devices. Leanplum is designed from the ground-up to deliver this value.”

Trouva

Trouva has raised $10m in a Series A round led by BGF Ventures, the UK’s largest venture fund, alongside Index Ventures and Octopus Investments.

Trouva currently has over 350 independent stores in the UK signed up to its online marketplace, which enables brick-and-mortar stores to sell their wares online with all the services you’d expect from bigger retailers, like click-and-collect and one-hour delivery.

“We will be using the investment to further develop our unique platform at existing stores within the Trouva community, while funding expansion to new shops and boutiques across the UK, and ultimately further afield too,” said co-founder and CEO Mandeep Singh.

This expansion includes the opening of a new office in Lisbon, Portugal.

Choozle

Self-service programmatic ad platform Choozle has secured $6m funding from its existing investors in a Series B round.

The investment will be used for development of products, promoting adoption of its platform and general growth of the company.

“It’s a testament to our team and platform that we maintained consistent hyper-growth while staying lean,” said Andrew Fischer, co-founder and CEO of Choozle. “While many competitors are being consolidated or closing up shop, this additional investment enables us to continue our expansion in the US and abroad, while aggressively investing in our product to ensure Choozle remains the most innovative and intuitive platform on the market.”

Yotpo

Yotpo has raised $51m in Series D funding for its user-generated content platform, which lets marketers gather reviews, photos and more from a brand’s real customers.

The round is led by Access Industries, with participation from Vertex Ventures and existing backers Bessemer Venture Partners, Blumberg Capital, Marker, Rhodium, Vintage Partners, and 2B Angels.

“Value creation is a long-term play. Today is an important milestone in our journey, but we have a long way ahead of us,” said CEO and co-founder Tomer Tagrin. “We are excited by what’s ahead, and this funding will guarantee we will continue to lead the way in product innovation, service and new experiences for our customers worldwide.”

Suggestv

Suggestv, a video discovery platform for publishers, has closed a $1m Seed round.

As reported by UKTN, the round was led by Mark Pearson at Fuel Ventures, with funding being used to develop the business in the UK – the company was founded in London in 2015 – ahead of planned international expansion.

Hostmaker

UK startup Hostmaker has closed a new $15m Series B funding round led by Initial Capital, along with existing investors DN Capital and DSG Consumer Partners.

Hostmaker is an Airbnb management company for homeowners who want to rent out their properties on the site without doing any of the hospitality work themselves.

The round was led by real estate investors Sansiri and Gaw Capital, based in Thailand and Hong Kong respectively, and the funding will be used to help Hostmaker expand its offering into Asia.