Italian buy-now-pay-later startup Scalapay acquired payments solutions provider Cabel IP S.p.A for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition will help Scalapay to launch new products and services and boost its deployment across Europe. More: - Scalapay's CEO Simone Mancini said, "This license means that merchants can now integrate Scalapay via their payment service provider (PSP)."
- The deal was completed on Mar. 2, 2023, with Scalapay becoming the sole stakeholder in Cabel.
- Scalapay intends to rebrand Cabel to Scalapay IP S.p.A.
- Mancini founded Scalapay along with Johnny Mitrevski.
- The firm cemented its unicorn status in 2022, crossing a valuation of €1B.
- Per Crunchbase, the firm has raised over $720M in total funding to date, last closing a $27M Series B round led by Poste Italiane in May 2022.
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DroneSeed, a startup that develops 8-ft. drones to re-seed land, is reorganizing into a new umbrella company. DroneSeed, along with its recent seed supplier acquisitions, Cal Forest Nurseries, and Siskiyou Seed, will work under the Mast Reforestation parent company. More: - In 2021, DroneSeed acquired Silvaseed, which had been operating for 130 years.
- Cal Forest Nurseries' customers include timber company Sierra Pacific Industries, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, and the U.S. Forest Service.
- DroneSeed last raised a $34M Series A, which included participation from Social Capital, Seven Seven Six, and Sand Hill Angels.
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Vantage, which works on tracking cloud expenditures, raised a $21M Series A led by Scale Venture Partners. Vantage plans to add support for Twilio, PlanetScale, IBM Cloud, and Oracle. More: - The company claims more than 300 customers, including NASA, Square, BuzzFeed, and Ripple.
- Vantage claims it has helped customers save $1B in annual cloud costs.
- The company started as a dashboard for AWS spending before adding support for Azure, Google Cloud, and services such as Datadog, Databricks, Snowflake, and Kubernetes clusters.
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Roshini Wijayasinha, the founder of Prosh Marketing, advises founders to engage with potential clients on social media platforms, host webinars, offer valuable content, or free trials to bring in the first 100 clients. She says startups face challenges in attracting the first few clients as there is little to no brand awareness about their company. "Second, you won't have any data about what messages might be the strongest, what channels might bring in the most qualified leads, or even what pricing or offers are the most efficient at converting customers, so you'll have to test and learn," writes Wijayasinha. More: - Wijayasinha recommends that founders build online communities around the pain points they are trying to solve and share resources with the group.
- She recollects that successful companies were genuinely focused on connecting and helping community members rather than selling, kept the community open to all members, and consistently posted content.
- Wijayasinha adds that startups should consider valuable content such as their white paper, free templates, infographics, or industry analysis, all of which would not only help customers that arrive on their website but also help optimize their page for search engine optimization.
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Starfish Space, a startup that works on satellite service vehicles, raised $14M led by Munich Re Ventures. The new funds will go toward the development of the Otter Pup, a prototype satellite servicing vehicle the size of a microwave oven. More: - The company was founded by former Blue Origin employees Austin Link and Trevor Bennett.
- The startup currently has 26 employees and plans to add more.
- "To fulfill the demand that we see out there for the Otter, it is likely that we will need further financing one way or another to be able to manufacture and scale up with the Otter," said Link.
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Aiberry, a startup developing AI-powered mental health screening tech, raised $8M in seed funding to increase the adoption of its platform. The platform leverages AI to evaluate mental health conditions through video and audio-based user interaction. After analyzing the information, the platform provides a risk score, evaluating users on conditions including depression and anxiety. More: - Aiberry's platform is meant to be used with a therapist, per co-CEO Johan Bjorkland.
- Aiberry's other co-founders include Newton Howard, a former computer scientist at Oxford University; co-CEO Linda Chung, a former speech-language pathologist; and Lior Auslander, a former executive at Ericsson.
- Confluence Capital Group led the funding round with participation from Ascension AI.
- The funding brings its total capital raised to date to $10M.
- It raised a pre-seed round of $2M in 2021.
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- A study done by J.P. Morgan found that female entrepreneurs lead only 5.7% of the startups in the Asia-Pacific region. Moreover, the number has stayed constant for five years.
- Former executives of The Week nabbed $4M in Series A funding to launch their climate media company dubbed Heatmap News. The startup received an $11.5M valuation at the fundraiser.
- Pakistan's transport management system and supply chain platform maker Trukkr raised $6.4M in seed funding from Accion Venture Lab and Sturgeon Capital.
- Tampa Bay Wave startup accelerator is expanding to St. Petersburg. Their new office in the region is scheduled to open on Mar. 20.
- Desafia San Francisco, ICEX Spain Trade, Mind the Bridge, and Red.es are jointly organizing a two-week Spring Immersion Program in Silicon Valley to help Spanish tech startups scale their organizations globally.
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 |  | Karan Chafekar is a Management Consultant, Business enthusiast, and Licensed Pilot.
Nicolas is a Sr. Analyst at Inside, covering startups and transportation trends. He is an avid map maker and data nerd. Nicolas has worked in the shared-scooter space, as well as advised e-bike and moped start-ups. | | | | Editor | Vibha Chapparike is a Freelance Writer & Editor at Inside.com. With her post-graduation in Management and Finance completed, Vibha is expanding her knowledge in venture capital, business, startups, and technology. She has had a career in public relations and communications. An ardent reader and writer currently residing in Singapore, you can follow Vibha on Twitter @VChapparike. | |
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