New England’s tech firms inked a bunch of deals this past week. Here are a few of them.
—Gemvara raised $15 million in a Series C funding round led by London-based Balderton Capital and joined by return investors Highland Capital Partners and Canaan Partners. The Lexington, MA-based online jewelry customization startup, which has now raised a total of $26 million, will put the new funds toward customer service, expanding merchandise, and enhancing the online shopping experience.
—Boston-based Apperian closed $9.5 million in new financing led by North Bridge Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers’ iFund, with existing investors CommonAngels and LaunchCapital also participating. Apperian makes a software platform to help big companies create, deploy, and manage iPhone and iPad apps. The new money should help the mobile startup go after the growing market for enterprise apps on tablets and smartphones.
—Massachusetts startups raised much less in February than they did in January, according to data provided by CB Insights’ FundingFlash, with the total brought in through equity-based deals falling from $242.5 million to just $130.9 million. Erin has the complete rundown on which companies did (or didn’t) fill their coffers in February.
—Foxboro, MA-based telemedicine startup BL Healthcare added $2 million to its Series A round of equity-, debt-, and rights-based financing, according to a regulatory filing. The round now totals $4.9 million.
—Emo Labs, a developer of invisible loudspeaker technology raised $1.4 million from 22 investors, an SEC filing indicates. The Waltham, MA-based firm is aiming to raise a total of $2.5 million in the equity- and rights-based offering.
—Boston-based private sale website RueLaLa is being spun out of parent company GSI Commerce (NASDAQ: [[ticker:GSIC]]), which agreed to be acquired by San Jose, CA-based eBay for $2.4 billion. RueLaLa and another GSI operation, ShopRunner, will become a separate company headed by GSI founder and CEO Michael Rubin.
—NetScout Systems (NASDAQ: [[ticker:NTCT]]), a network-performance management firm in Westford, MA, inked a deal to acquire Ipswich, U.K.- and Portsmouth, NH-based software firm Psytechnics for an undisclosed sum. NetScout, which competes with the likes of Seattle-based ExtraHop Networks, reported a profit of about $11 million on roughly $76 million in revenue in the last quarter.
—Longworth Venture Partners and Sigma Partners led a $5 million Series A financing for Boston-based Mobiquity, a mobile services firm. The startups founders are Bill Seibel (previously a founding member of Cambridge Technology Partners and founder and CEO of Zefer) and Scott Snyder (previously president of Breakthru Advisors and CEO of Decision Strategies International).
