Rippling, an all-in-one employee management platform managing all types of data about employees has raised a huge $145M in Series B after they had a Series A of $45M just an year ago.

Collectively, Rippling’s total funding amount now stands at $197M. The latest funding round was led by Founders Fund with help from Y Combinator, Kleiner Perkins, Initialized Capital, Greenoaks Capital, Bedrock Capital and Coatue Management.

First is the business itself. HR and employee management software are two major areas of IT that have faced a lot of fragmentation over the years, with many businesses opting for a cocktail of services covering disparate areas like employee onboarding, payroll, benefits, device management, app provisioning and permissions and more. That’s been even more the case among smaller organizations in the 2-1,000 employee range that Rippling targets.

Rippling is approaching that bigger challenge as one that can be tackled by a single platform — the theory being that managing HR employee data is essentially part and parcel of good management of IT data permissions and device provision. This funding is a signal of how both investors and customers are buying into Rippling and its approach, even if right now the majority of customers don’t onboard with the full suite of services. (Some 75% are usually signing up with HR products, Conrad noted.)

“We like to think of ourselves as a Salesforce for employee data,” Conrad said, “and by that, we think that employee data is more than just HR. We want to manage access to all of your third-party business apps, your computer and other devices. It’s when you combine all that that you can manage employees well.”

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After going through seed round in 2017 and raising Series A of $10M in 2018, the maintenance management software designed specially with mobile-first mindset, UpKeep CMMS has raised another $36M in Series B round. The funding round was led by Insight Partners in participation with Y Combinator, FundersClub, Mucker Capital, Emergence and Battery Ventures. With the newly acquired amount in Series B, UpKeep’s total funding amount has raised to $48.8M.

UpKeep offers plenty of features to help technicians and maintenance teams become more productive and agile. The pricing plans of UpKeep CMMS start from $35/m per user and go up to $180/m per user for large enterprises.

Technicians have to log plenty of information when they’re out on the job, but this usually involved writing this info down on paper and then returning to a desk to input the data into the system.

With UpKeep, the requester can use the app itself to notify the facilities manager of problems, or send an email that flows directly into the UpKeep system. Facilities managers use UpKeep to prioritize and assign issues to their team of technicians, who then receive the work orders right on UpKeep.

Instead of logging information on paper, these technicians can take pictures of the problem and note the parts they need or other details of the job right in the app. No duplication of effort.

“Yes, we track technicians and it’s a tool to manage work done by people,” said Chan. “But a manufacturing facility really cares much more about the equipment. They can use UpKeep to manage things like how many hours of downtime a piece of equipment has, etc. It’s more targeted toward the actual asset and the equipment versus the person completing their work.”

Chan said that around 80 percent of the company’s 400,000 users are on the free version of the app. Some brands on the app include Unilever, Siemens, DHL, McDonald’s, and Jet.com. Chan said UpKeep saw a 206 percent increase in revenue in 2019.

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Proxy, a smartphone-based digital identity platform that interacts with devices through BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) signals without touching them has raised $42M in Series B round led by Scale Venture Partners in participation with Kleiner Perkins, Y Combinator, Silicon Valley Bank and a venture studio, West. Last year, Proxy raised $13.6M in Series A and with the latest Series B funding, their total raised amount has reached $58.8M.

Proxy provides mobile access hardware devices (Mobile Reader Pro, Edge & Nano) for different environments, a secure cloud service that interacts with your existing control systems, a dashboard to manage access of your workplaces & users and most importantly an API and SDK to integrate Proxy with any device and create unlimited possibilities for businesses.

The raise brings Proxy to $58.8 million in funding so it can staff up at offices across the world and speed up deployments of its door sensor hardware and access control software. “We’re spread thin” says Mars. “Part of this funding is to try to grow up as quickly as possible and not grow for growth sake. We’re making sure we’re secure, meeting all the privacy requirements.”

How does Proxy work? Employers get their staff to install an app that knows their identity within the company, including when and where they’re allowed entry. Buildings install Proxy’s signal readers, which can either integrate with existing access control software or the startup’s own management dashboard.

Employees can then open doors, elevators, turnstiles, and garages with a Bluetooth low-energy signal without having to even take their phone out. Bosses can also opt to require a facial scan or fingerprint or a wave of the phone near the sensor. Existing keycards and fobs still work with Proxy’s Pro readers. Proxy costs about $300 to $350 per reader, plus installation and a $30 per month per reader subscription to its management software.

Luckily, Proxy has found a powerful growth flywheel. First an office in a big building gets set up, then they convince the real estate manager to equip the lobby’s turnstiles and elevators with Proxy. Other tenants in the building start to use it, so they buy Proxy for their office. Then they get their offices in other cities on board…starting the flywheel again. That’s why Proxy is doubling down on sales to commercial real estate owners.

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Flutterwave, an African fintech startup graduated from Y Combinator S16 batch that allows businesses to make and receive payments has secured $35M investment in Series B round. The funding round was led by e.ventures and Greycroft in participation with Visa, Green Visor Capital, Golden Palm Investments, FIS, Endeavor, CRE Venture Capital and 9Yards Capital. After this round, Flutterwave’s total funding amount has raised to $64.5M.

In 2016, while having seed round, they started offering a payment infrastructure that businesses could integrate with by using their API.

Later during 2017 & 2018, they raised $20M (collectively) in Series A and Series A Extension rounds. By that time, they had processed 100M transactions of payments worth $2.5B and also had partnerships with Uber, Booking.com, TransferWise and Flywire in Africa.

But now, Flutterwave is not just a payment processing API but a complete payment platform. Whether you want to add a checkout process to your website or want your own store to sell and accept payments, Flutterwave has complete built-in solutions for you. You can even create and manage custom virtual cards, send invoices to customers and more using Flutterwave. With current Series B announcement, Flutterwave has also announced their partnership with Worldpay allowing them to also accept payments from Africa.

With the funding, Flutterwave  will invest in technology and business development to grow market share in existing operating countries, CEO Olugbenga Agboola — aka GB — told TechCrunch. The company will also expand capabilities to offer more services around its payment products.

“We don’t just want to be a payment technology company, we have sector expertise around education, travel, gaming, e-commerce, fintech companies. They all use our expertise,” said GB. That means Flutterwave will provide more solutions around the broader needs of its clients.

“Our business goes beyond payments. People don’t want to just make payments, they want to do something,” he said. And Flutterwave aims to offer more capabilities toward what those clients want to do in Africa.

“If you are a charity that wants to raise money for cancer research in Ghana, or you want to sell online, or you’re Cardi B…who wants to do concerts in Africa…we want to be able to set up payments, write the code and create the platform for those needs,” GB explained.

That also means Flutterwave, which built its early client base across global companies, aims to serve smaller African businesses, including startups. Current customers include African-founded tech companies, such as moto ride-hail venture Max.ng.

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