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Here are today’s funding deals:
NewVoiceMedia takes $50M
NewVoiceMedia, a company that sells cloud-based software for sales, marketing, and service employees in contact centers, has raised $50 million in new funding. The company's technology takes care of organizing, recording, and analyzing all of a business' inbound phone calls. That way, there's no need to run software like that in an on-premises data center, and there's no need for everyone to work out of a central call center. Instead, they can take calls on their own smartphones. The software can hook in with customers' existing Salesforce.com software for tracking sales leads and customers.
Read more on VentureBeat: Fielding all calls from the cloud, NewVoiceMedia tacks on $50M
Duetto raises $21M
Hotel profit optimization company Duetto has taken $21 million in new funding to market its service worldwide. Duetto sells subscriptions to its cloud-based software, which helps hotels sell all of their rooms for the highest possible profit. Duetto does this by gathering and analyzing lots of disparate data sets — things like flight times, air traffic, weather patterns, and Internet hotel shopping behavior, co-founder Marco Benvenuti told VentureBeat. Based on this information, hotels can predict demand levels for a certain time period and set prices accordingly.
Read more on VentureBeat: Duetto takes $21M to expand hotel profit optimization service
Scytl gets $20M
Scytl is trying to modernize elections by killing the ballot box and moving the voting process online. SAP Ventures just handed the startup another $20 million to help the company expand. The software focuses on providing voter registration and voting services, as well as election night reporting. The company also offers election planning. It's goal is to make elections efficient, accessible, and transparent, but what Scytl really offers is security — a crucial component for high stakes elections. It has developed "election-specific cryptographic security technology protected by more than 40 international patents and patent applications," according to the company's press release.
Read more on VentureBeat: Scytl snags another $20M to put secure elections on the Web
Moven raises $8M
Last week money-management service Moven raised $8 million at an undisclosed valuation in a round led by SBT Venture Capital, the venture arm of Russia's national savings bank Sberbank. Virginia-based Route 66 Ventures, South-African Standard Bank, and London-based Anthemis Group also took part in the round of funding. The New-York based startup had already attracted Russian money in a previous round last year, with the Life.SREDA fund investing $2 million as the service was still in beta. All told, Moven now boasts $12.41 in financial-backing.
Read more on VentureBeat: Russia's Sberbank leads $8M round in US money management startup Moven
mNectar takes $7M
mNectar has raised $7 million in funding for its new ad platform dubbed Playable, which lets gamers try out a mobile game before they decide to download or buy it. The "playable ads" are a new form of advertising for games that allows potential purchasers to have a better shopping experience as they browse for new games, according to founder and chief executive Wally Nguyen. By transforming the mobile ad from the staid banner to something much more enticing, mNectar hopes to solve the problem of getting apps discovered amid a sea of millions of rivals in the app stores.
Read more on VentureBeat: mNectar raises $7M for mobile ads that let you play a game before downloading it
French Girls raises $500K
On French Girls, users snap selfies and draw strangers. The app just crossed one million downloads, and its creator, Appek, today announced a $500,000 seed round led by actress-singer Christina Milian and American football player Larry English. The French Girls app first made its debut in January and was named in reference to the famous "draw me like one of your French girls" line from the film Titanic. The app lets users turn selfies into hand-drawn portraits and, in exchange, tasks users with drawing (or tracing) selfies taken by strangers.
Read more on VentureBeat: 'Draw me like one of your French girls,' says app that raised $500K
