Enterprise Cloud Platform Company Takes The B2B Venture Capital Lead

This week showed investor interest in B2B FinTech companies in international markets, as a trade finance platform in India and a human resources (HR)/payroll cloud software firm in the U.K. landed funding rounds. But it was a Bellevue, Washington-based beauty and wellness industry enterprise software firm that secured the largest funding this week, coming in at $160 million.

Zenoti

Bellevue, Washington-based beauty and wellness space enterprise cloud platform Zenoti finished a $160 million Series D funding round at a valuation in excess of $1 billion, according to a press release. The fundraising was headed up by Advent International via Advent Tech and Sunley House Capital, an Advent affiliate. Steadview Partners and Tiger Global also took part in the round.

Financial resources will be harnessed to keep growing operations, help with research and development and power additional artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, while the company also said it will go after inorganic growth opportunities, the release stated. Zenoti said it fuels over 12,000 companies in more than 50 nations.

Arya

India-based Arya, which offers post-harvest services throughout the agricultural value chain, said that it landed $21 million in a Series B financing round, according to a TechCrunch report. Quona Capital, a venture firm that is geared toward FinTech in developing markets, headed up the round, with Omnivore and LGT Lightstone Aspada taking part as well.

Arya runs a network of over 1,500 warehouses in 20 Indian states, the report stated. The company has disbursed more than $36.5 million to agricultural producers, while its partners have disbursed in excess of $95 million.

“Arya is addressing a vastly underserved market of farmers in India, half of whom previously had little access to post-harvest finance,” Quona Capital Co-Founder and Partner Ganesh Rengaswamy said in a statement, per the report.

CloudTrucks

CloudTrucks, which positions itself as a “business in a box” for truckers, closed a $20.5 million Series A funding round. Caffeinated Capital headed up the round, with participation from Khosla Ventures and Craft Ventures, among others.

CloudTrucks plans to harness the infusion to speed up product development and the recruitment of talent in sales, operations, engineering and data science. It made the announcement at the same time it rolled out its CT Cash payments product. CT Cash is a complimentary instant pay and cash card offering built in conjunction with Visa.

M1xchange

Online invoicing discounting company M1xchange has notched $4.5 million of funding headed up by Mayfield and Beenext Asia, Inc42 reported. The firm, which Sundeep Mohindru rolled out in 2017, seeks to grow its network throughout India and invest more in technology with the new infusion. It links micro businesses and small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with nonbank financial companies (NBFCs) to allow for financing based on bills and invoices.

M1xchange also connects with different third-party infrastructures, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) technologies. M1xchange has a Reserve Bank Of India license to run a Trade Receivables Discounting System (TReDS) infrastructure, .

XCD

United Kingdom-based HR and payroll cloud software company XCD notched 2 million pounds (approximately $2.7 million) in funding to help with its growth roadmap, BusinessLive reported. James Skade and Alex Snodgrass headed up the arrangement for the investment firm BGF.

The infusion will help with the firm’s growth intentions. BGF said the funds would support the company’s sales and promotion functions, according to the report. XCD, which works in the private, public and non-profit verticals, has over 30,000 users in 35 nations harnessing its services, which are fueled by Salesforce.