News Briefs

March 31, 2016 | Israeli taxi hailing app Gett (formerly Get Taxi) has acquired British black cab company Radio Taxis. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed but Gett Western Europe managing director Remo Gerber said that the acquisition was made for “several million pounds.” Following the acquisition, Gett will have a fleet of 11,500 London licensed cabs on its books, nearly 50% of the black cabs in the UK capital. In London’s “taxi wars” Gett is now firmly lined up behind the licensed black cabs while Uber is championing unlicensed minicabs. For this reason, the buyout was welcomed by London’s Licensed Taxi Drivers Association. Founded in Israeli in 2010 by Shahar Waiser and Roi More, Gett also operates in 25 of the UK’s major provincial cities including Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Glasgow and Edinburgh as well as the US and Russia, and throughout its home base in Israel.

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March 30, 2016 | Real-time, personalized email technology provider PowerInbox has closed a $6.5 million Series A Round financing round led by Battery Ventures, Genesis Partners and new investor Maverick Ventures, with participation from previous investors as well. The funding is being used to accelerate the growth which PowerInbox experienced in 2015, when the company saw an increase of 700% in emails where PowerInbox code was inserted, 1,400% growth in impressions and 2,000% growth in revenue. The company is now embedded in over 2.5 billion emails sent a month from over 500 email newsletters and optimizes over 30,000 different pieces of content per day. New York-based PowerInbox merged with Israeli company ActivePath in 2012 and maintains offices in Petah Tikva, which will be expanded following the latest financing round. During 2015, PowerInbox added over 100 new clients such as Hearst, Edmunds, Sephora, General Motors, MSG, Showtime, HBO, and others to its DynamicMail email marketing solution and CNN, ABC, Wiley, Bonnier, Beyond, New York Magazine, Bauer, Myspace, and others to its RevenueStripe content recommendation solution. DynamicMail is ESP agnostic and works across all devices and email services.

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March 30, 2016 |  Alon MedTech Ventures incubator, established in 2013 by chairman Dr. Shimon Eckhouse and CEO and CTO Dr. Judith Zilberstein, is signing a cooperation agreement with Tsinghua University, one of China’s leading universities. This is the first cooperation agreement of its kind between an Israeli technology incubator and a Chinese entity. The agreement is Tsinghua University’s second in Israel, after it signed an agreement with Tel Aviv University in 2013 to establish a joint center in China for Israeli and Chinese researchers, called the XIN Research Center. Under the agreement, the Alon MedTech incubator will review projects from the XIN Research Center, and select several of them for further development in the incubator. The products to be developed by these companies are to be adapted to the Chinese market and prepared for marketing in China at the accelerator jointly owned by Alon MedTech and the XIN Center. At the same time, parties at Tsinghua University will help companies in the Alon MedTech incubator find both investors and marketing channels for their medical device products. The signing of the agreement takes place today in the framework of an event in Jerusalem with the participation of a large delegation from China. The delegation will include Tsinghua University personnel and representatives of 10 other universities, who will be accompanied by representatives of the Chinese administration, investment concerns, and industrial concerns. The Alon MedTech incubator operates in the medical devices sector. Eckhouse is the founder of Syneron, which has a current market cap of $251 million. He was the first investor in Ventor, sold to Medtronic for $325 million, and other medical devices companies.

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March 29, 2016 |  Google-owned GPS driving app Waze seeks to help drivers avoid speeding tickets with the launch today of a new speed alert feature. If you’re driving on unfamiliar roads or where the speed limit isn’t clearly posted, you can set up alerts for when you’re driving too fast. The feature will be landing globally “soon,” and at launch it will be available in 16 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Colombia, Czech Republic, El Salvador, France, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad & Tobago, and Uruguay. The Waze speedometer will appear on your mobile screen, and if you exceed the speed limit, an alert will blast across the screen until you reduce your speed into the legal zone. You can also tailor the notifications so that you receive alerts when you hit the limit or when you go a pre-determined percentage over the limit. Founded in Israel in 2007 by Ehud Shabtai, Amir Shinar, and Uri Levine, Waze has built a solid reputation for the way it lets users share real-time traffic data, prompting Google to acquire the company for more than $1 billion in 2013.

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March 29, 2016 |Israeli video optimization startup Beamr has raised $15 million in a financing round led by Disruptive Growth and with the participation of previous investors Marker LLC and Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors. Beamr is also acquiring video conversion tech firm Vanguard Video to bolster its line of video encoding, media compression and optimization products, “Reuters” reports. No financial details about the acquisition were disclosed. Beamr is headquartered in Tel Aviv and was founded in 2009 by CEO Sharon Carmel. Beamr said that the acquisition will enable it to achieve unprecedented levels of video quality at very low bit rates to allow cable, satellite, mobile and other operators to deliver high quality video over congested networks.

 

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 March 29, 2016 |  Israeli cloud computing startup Stratoscale has raised $27 million in a Series C financing round. Qualcomm Inc., through its venture investment group, Qualcomm Ventures, joined this financing round with participation from all existing investors including Battery Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Cisco, Intel and SanDisk. Herzliya-based Stratoscale has developed a zero-to-cloud-in-minutes solution. The company seeks to transform cloud computing capabilities within the data center by enabling businesses to embrace new technologies at a faster pace. Founded in 2013 by CEO Ariel Maislos, Stratoscale has raised over $70 million in funding over the past three years that is dedicated to support global expansion of the company.

 

 

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March 28, 2016 |Yokohama Rubber Co. has said it will buy Israel’s Alliance Tire Group for $1.18 billion from private equity company KKR. The company, which was once on the brink of bankruptcy, was sold to KKR three years ago for $500 million. Passenger tire company Yokohama Rubber, which plans entering the agricultural and forest machinery market in which Alliance tires has expertise, expects to complete the acquisition by July 1. Founded in 1950 and based in Hadera, Alliance Tire is owned by India’s Alliance Tire Group (ATG), which manufactures and sells tires to 120 countries. 20% of ATG’s operations are in Israel which leads in the development of innovative tires. 650 out of the company’s 3,000 employees are in Israel with the remainder in India. Israel’s Isia Tchetchik has served as the company chairman since 2002.

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March 28, 2016 | Israeli wearable startup LifeBEAM has raised $16 million in Series A funding as it prepares to release a new wearable focused on fitness. LifeBEAM currently powers hats and helmets that connect with a variety of apps and devices to help athletes track their workouts. LifeBEAM was founded in 2010 by Omri Yoffe and Zvika Orron and since then the company has provided technology, hardware and analytics to players in the wearable and fitness spaces such as Samsung and Under Armour. The funding round was led by Square Peg Capital, with participation from Wellborn Ventures, Cerca Partners, Atomic14 Ventures, Triventures and angel investors. The funding comes as the company plans to launch a Kickstarter campaign for a new device, which it calls the Awareable, in May. The company has previously raised about $3 million in seed funding and the Series A brings the total investment to $19 million.

 

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March 28, 2016 | The Floor, a recently launched Fintech hub, is set to open in the Israeli stock exchange building in the center of Tel Aviv. The new hub, the first of its kind in Israel, will include a collaborative workspace for Fintech companies, private offices, and a unique acceleration plan for Fintech entrepreneurs. FinTech Next, the company behind “The Floor”, was founded in 2015 by Gil Devora, Avi Cohen and Moises Cohen. FinTech signed a five year lease with the Israeli stock exchange building to rent out an 800 square meter space in the building, with an option to extend for three more years. The hub is expected to host over 25 Fintech companies, all in different funding and progress stages. Among The Floor’s founders are some of the biggest banks in the world: RBS, Banco Santander, HSBC Intesa Sanpaolo, alongside Chinese-Israeli fund the Pando Group that plans to invest up to $250 million dollars in Israeli initiatives. The fund has also invested a preliminary amount of $2 million in The Floor.

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March 28, 2016 | Juno, a new ride-sharing service that is planning to take on Uber, is talking with investors about a $30 million round of funding, according to several sources. Founded earlier this year by CEO Talmon Marco, the Co – Founder & CEO of Israeli startup Viber Media Inc., Juno intends to give equity to their drivers (so that by 2026, half the company’s founding shares will be owned by company drivers). Juno also plans to take a smaller cut off every ride: 10% compared to Uber’s 20% to 25%. Juno is slated to launch in its first market, New York City, this spring, with “thousands” of drivers already signed up to work with the company.

 

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 March 27, 2016 | Israeli customer insight company ciValue has closed a $2.4 million seed round from Nielsen Innovate, Mac Fund, a Korean – Israeli fund, Deutsche Telekom and other investors. The financing will support the rollout of the company’s cloud-based, self-service customer analytics and personalization solution for grocery, health and beauty retailers. Caesarea based ciValue was founded in 2014 by Beni Basel, Tzachi Rosen, and Gilad Cohen.

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March 27, 2016 | The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Israel’s Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. CINQAIR injection for treating asthma. The drug treats asthma in adults who have a history of severe attacks despite taking medication. In the studies on which FDA approval was based, treatment with CINQAIR was associated with reduction in asthma exacerbations of up to 59 percent as well as significant improvement in lung function, symptoms, and asthma-related quality of life. This is the first approval of CINQAIR (reslizumab) anywhere in the world. The treatment is expected to become commercially available to patients, by prescription, during the second quarter of 2016. Teva was founded in 1901 and is currently headed by CEO Erez Vigodman.

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March 23, 2016 | token, a payment security startup, has been selected among the top-10 enterprises for the FinTech Startupbootcamp accelerator in New York, providing the company the opportunity to grow under the guidance of corporate partners, including MasterCard Santander, Deutsche Bank, Rabobank and others. Founded in 2013 by Zohar Steinberg, token  is led by a team of Israeli and US entrepreneurs who worked together for almost a decade and have more than 40 years experience in product development, strategy, R&D and operations. A mobile application with very sophisticated security algorithms,  token enables customers to eliminate fraud and identify theft by never disclosing their identity and payment details when shopping on-line or ordering over the phone. FinTech Startupbootcamp begins on April 18th and lasts three months, at which time token, along with the other ten companies, will present its progress to more than 500 investors on “Demo Day.”

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March 23, 2016 |Israeli startup Clicktale, has won the Adobe 2015 Marketing Cloud Innovation Partner of the Year, Americas Award, in recognition of its deep integrations and customer success stories. The award was presented by Matt Thompson, EVP, Worldwide Field Operations, during Partner Day at the Adobe Summit in Las Vegas. Founded by Dr. Tal Schwartz and Arik Yavilevich in 2006, Clicktale’s cloud-based customer experience management platform is used by Fortune 500 companies such as Walmart, CNN, Allstate, UBS and Adobe to optimize experiences on desktop and mobile devices. An Adobe partner since 2010, Clicktale integrates with Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target and Adobe Experience Manager. Adobe Marketing Cloud empowers companies to use big data to effectively reach and engage customers and prospects with highly personalized marketing content across devices and digital touch points. Thousands of brands worldwide including two thirds of Fortune 50 companies rely on Adobe Marketing Cloud.

 

 

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 March 23, 2016 | Israeli startup Start A Fire has raised $2.5 million in a Series A funding round led by Canaan Venture Partners. The round also included existing and new investors such as Lool Ventures and Aleksandar Totic, co-founder of Netscape. Founded by Oren Barzilai and Oded Golan, Tel Aviv-based Start A Fire launched last year and has raised $3.6 million to date. The company developed a unique social attribution tool for marketers, brands, and publishers which allows them to add their content recommendations to any link they share, increasing their exposure and enabling them to reach new audiences. The new funding will allow the social attribution tool to build on the success of its current offerings, expanding its creative-driven team to introduce new social recognition functionalities for brands, publishers, influencers and marketers.

 

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