FinTech news in lightspeed venture partners category

The 12 startups gathered in the presentation hall had been hand-picked from about 3,600 applicants for the latest cohort of Sequoia’s four-year-old early-stage-focused Surge program

Nicolás Giménez, the co-founder of Argentina-based startup Fidu, has convinced over 1,000 schools across the Latin America region to place their operations in the hands of a scrappy edtech startup. Fidu wants to build a new operating system for LatAm schools, so that institutions can digitally manage everything from finances to schoolwide announcements. Here’s how the startup’s debut products work: School administrators can use Fidu’s app to send tuition and pay slips to parents, and then tuition is paid by the recipients via phone. Latin American schools are working with paper, WhatsApp groups and e-mail, Giménez said.

Michael Mignano has joined the consumer practice of the sprawling venture firm Lightspeed Venture Partners, after previously co-founding the podcasting platform Anchor and then leading Spotify talk audio business after the streaming giant acquired Anchor in 2019 for more than $150 million. Former New York Times reporter Lydia Polgreen, who was helping to run the podcast studio Gimlet, which Spotify bought for a reported $230 million in February 2019, meanwhile left the company in April to rejoin the Times. Interestingly, Mignano joins a firm that did not invest in Anchor, though he says in a new Medium post that he first met Lightspeed when he was out fundraising for his then-nascent startup. It’s a matter of money, largely, says Mignano, writing that podcast revenues are expected to exceed $2 billion this year, while YouTube generated nearly $29 billion in video ad revenue last year alone.

Lightspeed Venture Partners and Avenir Growth co-led Alloy’s latest financing, which included participation from existing backers Canapi Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Avid Ventures and Felicis Ventures.

To power the expansion, which will see Lightyear land in 19 new markets including the Baltics and much of Western Europe, London-based Lightyear has also raised $25 million in a series A round of funding led by U.S. venture capital firm Lightspeed, with participation from other notable backers including Virgin Group,

Lightspeed began investing in India over 10 years ago and has amassed an impressive portfolio of several fast-growing startups including Byju’s, India’s most valuable startup, SaaS firm Innovaccer, e-commerce giant Udaan, social media giant ShareChat and payments giant Razorpay. The firm, which has a team of nine partners in India and Southeast Asia, is nearly doubling the size of its fund because it’s seeing more opportunities in the regions as a young crop of startups attempt to solve deeper and newer problems, said Rahul Taneja, a partner at Lightspeed, in an interview with journalist. The fund, fourth for Lightspeed India, was hard-capped at $500 million, meaning it didn’t want to raise additional capital, said the firm, which unveiled its $275 million third India fund in 2020. The Tuesday announcement confirms journalist April report, which said Lightspeed had kick started fundraising deliberations for the new India and Southeast Asia fund and was aiming to raise about $500 million.

NFT marketplace Magic Eden, launched just nine months ago, has raised $130 million in a Series B round co-led by Electric Capital and Greylock Partners, bringing its valuation to $1.6 billion.

CyberConnect plans to generate revenues through the social data network, which include different participants like data contributors, indexers and recommenders, curators, and users.

CertiK, a web3 and blockchain security company, has raised $88 million in its latest round, bringing its valuation to $2 billion. To date, CertiK has protected over $300 billion worth of crypto assets for 2,500 enterprise clients through its auditing and fraud investigation services, among other offerings, the company stated.

Debt marketplace CredAvenue, which helps businesses and enterprises secure debt from lenders, has become the fastest Indian fintech startup to join the unicorn club, it said on Sunday. The startup, which counts Sequoia Capital India, Lightspeed Venture Partners, TVS Capital, Lightrock, Vivriti Capital and Indian fintech CRED among its backers, has raised over $227 million to date.