Every day, Global University Venturing rounds up the smaller investments from across the university innovation ecosystem in its deal net.
Mentor Collective, a US-based platform connecting students to mentors, has received $3m in funding from investors including IU Ventures, the fund management arm of Indiana University. The round was led by Lumina Foundation and also included Strada Education Network, 10x Impact, EduLab Capital Partners and Emerge Education. Mentor Collective was founded in 2013 as Shearwater and raised $600,000 in a seed-1 funding round led by Rethink Education in May 2018, having previously raised approximately $1.27m from undisclosed backers in 2015, according to a securities filing.
Haelixa, a Switzerland-based spinout of ETH Zurich that enables items to be tracked through the consumer goods supply chain, closed a funding round yesterday backed by financial services firm Zürcher Kantonalbank (ZKB) and venture capital firm Investiere. The size of the round has not been disclosed, though Investiere noted in a blog post it had contributed CHF1.2m ($1.2m). Haelixa will use the cash to bolster its sales, marketing and development activities. Haelixa’s technology relies on applying DNA markers to products, allowing them to be traced throughout the supply chain. The company previously obtained $129,000 in pre-seed capital from Venture Kick in 2017. ZKB was also identified as a returning backer for the latest round, though details about its previous involvement could not be ascertained.
Hoow Foods, a Singapore-based foodtech developer co-founded by researchers from National University of Singapore, yesterday obtained S$1.7m ($1.23m) in seed capital led by food and beverage producer Killiney Group. The round was also supported by Innovate360, a government-backed food incubator, and Trive Ventures. Hoow Foods is working on reformulating food to be healthier while maintaining taste and texture. Its products include an ice cream brand called Callery’s that boasts less than a third of calories, fat and sugar found in other premium brands.
GreenBay Technologies, a US-based data management spinout of University of Wisconsin – Madison set up with the support of its tech transfer arm Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, yesterday collected an undisclosed amount from enterprise cloud data management company Informatica. GreenBay’s platform relies on machine learning and big data technologies to automate complex data science tasks.
