As international pressure makes a U.S. IPO a non-starter for most Chinese startups, many are considering mainland offerings. The Information reminds us that Sequoia Capital China's bet on Ninebot, the owner of Segway, resulted in a 38x return when the company debuted in Shanghai in 2020. More: - The price of a 15% stake in the company after the lock-up period ended was $1.3B. The company's stock is up 23% since its debut.
- The company is now worth $6.6B (RMB42B) and is trading at a multiple of about 110x trailing 12-month earnings.
- Looking at those results, it becomes clear why big U.S. investors such as Tiger Global Management and D1 Capital Partners are still placing bets in China despite many competitors' fears about the so-called "A-share market."
- The A-share market in mainland China has strict currency controls, making a conversion from yuan to dollars difficult.
- Stakeholders hoping to move stock must also pay a tax to get it out of China.
- Paul Haswell, a technology partner for law firm Seyfarth Shaw in Hong Kong, notes that hardware companies will have an easier time listing in mainland China compared with companies with data-heavy business models.
- The latter fall under national security laws, meaning that they face additional regulatory hurdles.
- The Shanghai Stock Exchange overtook Hong Kong to become the third-largest source of IPO proceeds after the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq in the U.S.
- That is despite the fact that 149 of the 713 companies that have applied to list on the Shanghai Star Market canceled their applications.
- Corruption is also a problem: 60 pending IPOs on the Star Market and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange were suspended after regulators revealed a fraud investigation.
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Flutterwave, a fintech hailing from San Francisco and Lagos, Nigeria, raised $250M at a $3B valuation. That makes it the highest-valued startup operating out of an African country, beating out SoftBank-backed fintech OPay and FTX-backed cross-border payments platform Chipper Cash. More: - The latest funding tripled Flutterwave's previous $1B valuation, which it received after a $170M Series C round led by Tiger Global and Avenir in March 2021.
- The round confirmed prior reports and was led by B Capital Group, with participating investors Alta Park Capital, Whale Rock Capital, and Lux Capital contributing.
- Of course, existing investors Avenir Growth, Tiger Global, Glynn Capital, Green Visor, and Salesforce Ventures also doubled down.
- Flutterwave enabled SME cross-border payments transactions in Africa via a single API.
- Since its prior funding round, the company has grown its translation volume from $9B over 140 million transactions to process 200 million transactions worth more than $16B. It operates in 34 countries.
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 Black or Brown entrepreneurs require $250,000 more to start the exact same business as their white peers, according to Melissa Bradley, managing partner at 1863 Ventures. That is despite the fact that the average Black-owned business is 8.7 years old, while 50% of all businesses in the U.S. fail before they reach their fifth year. More: - While Black entrepreneurs raised $4.2B in venture funding last year, entailing 281% YoY growth, that only constituted 1.3% of the total VC haul.
- Bradley notes that there is a perception that Black-serving businesses are doomed to fail due to the community’s lack of funds, despite their having an aggregate purchasing power of $16T.
- The situation is starting to get better: Over $300B was allocated in 2022 to Black GPs, which is a step toward moving away from the model of a white VC with little access to the Black market.
- These investors focus on revenue-based financing and other non-diluted types of financing, which serve Black entrepreneurs better.
- Still, those GPs are at the early stage, meaning that the funding gap will continue to persist at later stages.
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Uniphore, a provider of a conversational automation platform for customer service, raised $400M at a $2.5B valuation. The round was led by NEA and brought the company's total funding raised to date to $610M. It was also the largest financing to date in call center AI, reports Forbes. More: - Uniphore's platform uses natural language processing to gauge a customer's mood and speech, then provides customer service agents with live-action suggestions or post-call analytics to review.
- Founded in 2008 and incubated at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Uniphore now operates out of Palo Alto. It is headed by co-founders Umesh Sachdev, CEO, and Ravi Saraogi, COO.
- Sachdev claims that the company is on track to reach its goal of $100M in annual recurring revenue by the end of its 2022 fiscal year.
- It relies on big customers for its revenue flows: 15 customers pay over $1M a year, and three are spending more than $5M.
- Uniphore makes about 70% of its money by selling to about 100 large companies, including DHL and Priceline.
- The company has made two acquisitions to date: Emotion Research Lab for added capabilities in emotion AI, and Jacada, for enhanced low-code/no-code capabilities.
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 Today's Funding 💸 Biotech/Health - Ro (New York, N.Y.), direct-to-patient healthcare: $150M led by ShawSpring Partners, participation from General Catalyst, FirstMark Capital, TQ Ventures, SignalFire, BoxGroup, The Chernin Group, et al.
- Terray (Pasadena, Calif.), digital drug discovery: $60M A led by Madrona Venture Group, participation from Two Sigma Ventures, Digitalis Ventures, KdT Ventures, Goldcrest Capital, et al.
- Parse Biotechnics (Seattle, Wash.), scalable single-cell sequencing solutions: $41.5M led by Marshall Wace, Janus Henderson Investors, participation from Soleus Capital, Logos Capital, Bioeconomy Capital.
- Climedo (Munich, Germany), digital platform for electronic data capture in decentralized clinical trials: $5.7M Seed led by Nauta Capital, participation from Westtech Ventures, et al.
Blockchain - 5ire (New Delhi, India), blockchain ecosystem whose primary offering is 5ireChain:...
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- Akamai, a content delivery service, acquired infrastructure-as-a-service platform provider Linode for approximately $900M.
- Mubadala Capital closed a $322M maiden fund for Brazilian startups.
- Payments platform Stronghold launched a $100M fund for underrepresented founders, fintech, and web3.
- Revolut India acquired Indian international money transfers company Arvog Forex for an undisclosed sum.
- While everyone is anticipating a fall in valuations to come, TechCrunch+ asks whether VCs have been undervaluing startups for decades. Check out the article here.
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 |  | Inside VC's writer/curator Stephen currently lives in Berlin and is pursuing a Master's degree in philosophy. He otherwise spends his time trying his hand at recipes from India and Southeast Asia, escaping it all at the kickboxing gym, and offending aural sensibilities with his band. |  | | Editor | Aaron Crutchfield is based in the high desert of California. Over the last two decades, he has spent time writing and editing at various local newspapers and defense contractors in California. When he's not working, he can often be found looking at the latest memes with his kids or working on his 1962 Ford. | |
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