NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Thursday, September 3, 2015

InVenture Capital Corp., a provider of small loans by cellphones, has raised $10 million in Series A funding, Yuliya Chernova reports for Dow Jones VentureWire. The company has a mobile app that can be downloaded by users, who then can request a loan. Once the user has granted the app access to their device, the company’s algorithm evaluates the activity on their mobile money accounts, such as how much they deposit and withdraw, the timeliness of their utility bill payments, and thousands of other nuggets of information such as social media, demographic, and communications patterns, to make a loan decision in minutes. The company currently operates in Kenya and Tanzania. Data Collective led the Series A round, which includedLowercase Capital, Collaborative Fund, Female Founders Fund and individual investors.

Voalte Inc., a startup offering secure communications programs for doctors and nurses with smartphones, has raised $17 million. The Series D round was provided by new investors Ascension Ventures and Cerner Capital and was joined by returning investorBedford Funding.

Cloud Apps Capital Partners launched Tuesday with seven investments and a first fund of $53.7 million. The San Francisco-based firm was founded by Matt Holleran, a former venture partner at Emergence Capital Partners who left that firm in 2013. Before Emergence, Mr. Holleran was a vice president at Salesforce.com Inc.

1776, a startup incubator, has closed a $12.5 million seed fund to invest in early-stage startups in education, health, energy and transportation, the firm announced.

Saucey Inc., an alcohol-on-demand delivery startups, has raised $4.5 million. Blumberg Capital led Saucey’s seed round, with participation from Structure Capital, Altpoint Ventures, T5 Capital, HashTagOne and individual investors.