VentureBeat

Yodlee, an online finance web platform that directly serves banks and other financial institutions, has raised a large round of $35 million, led by banking giant Bank of America.

Although Yodlee has been something of a dark horse while popular personal finance sites like Mint have taken the spotlight, the company’s apparent success could indicate a more difficult road than anticipated for their competitors in the personal finance market, including Buxfer, Geezeo, Wesabe and many others.

The basic idea behind Yodlee is aggregation. The average American has 12 financial accounts of various types, according to CEO Anil Arora, and there are thousands of different services on offer, from banks to stock accounts. Yodlee got its start in 1999 as an aggregator of all the information from those different account types.

Today, it offers something called the Personal Financial Management Suite, which Arora called “a better, faster, easier Quicken online.” That product, in fact, is the back-end for Mint, which adds its own custom touches to help users understand where and how their money is distributed. However, it’s also used a growing majority of the country’s largest banks.

That should be worrying for independent finance sites. Most banks were very slow to add any online functionality beyond showing account balances and a list of transactions. That’s what provided an opening for personal finance sites to start up — consumers obviously want to see all the information from their various accounts in one place, arrayed in ways that are understandable. But banks are beginning to catch on, Arora says, and add the same tools to their own sites.

Given that the motivator for most people to seek out a personal finance site is a desire for things to be as easy as possible, if banks begin to aggressively use tools like Yodlee, there will be less incentive for their customers to seek out Mint and its cohorts, even if those sites continue to have an edge in visualization and functionality. In fact, Yodlee itself has only 50,000 users on its own personal finance portal, compared to 10 million who unwittingly use it through a bank.

Interestingly, Yodlee’s other big product, a recently-released bill payment solution, also sounds like a potential PayPal competitor down the road. Aside from the obvious function of paying bills from your utility, internet provider and other companies, it can transfer money between your various accounts.

Arora said you can also pay individuals, like your maid or gardener (if you’re lucky enough to have them). When I asked whether the service could be expanded, he only agreed that “other payments” could be addressed, but added, “Obviously, a lot of financial institutions are very interested in expanding transfers.” That seems to imply that other payments, for instance to a store or online auction, could be arranged in the future.

The funding, led by BoA, also brought on previous investors Warburg Pincus, Accel Partners and Institutional Venture Partners. Yodlee recapitalized with $40 million in 2002, making Warburg the primary shareholder; combined with the current funding, it has taken $75 million. It’s based in Redwood City, Calif.

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• PolyRemedy, developer of robotic wound care, takes in $25M (release)
• Bacchus Vascular gets $15M for clot-busting device (VentureWire)
• Protein-evolution company Modular Genetics gets $1.2M (VentureWire)
• PharmatrophiX gets $300K for Alzheimer’s disease prevention drugs (release)
• Light Sciences Oncology withdraws IPO (Edgar)
• Arizona’s Translational Accelerator launches $20M life-sciences fund (bizjournals.com)
• Cornea-reshaper Avedro gets $7M (VentureWire)
• Gastrotech Pharma gets $6M in wake of Lilly deal (VentureWire)
• Biomaterials maker MiMedx goes public via reverse merger (release)
• Acrongenomics to complete acquisition of Molecular Vision by the end of Q1 (release)

PolyRemedy, developer of robotic wound care, takes in $25M – Mountain View, Calif.-based PolyRemedy, a developer of systems that robotically manufacture wound dressings for patients, raised $25 million in a second funding round. Investors included Advanced Technology Ventures, IDG Ventures Boston, MedVenture Associates and Harris & Harris Group.

PolyRemedy has been keeping quiet about its work until now, but the company’s release lays out its strategy, which is to fabricate customized wound dressings at the “point of care” — here, apparently, doctors’ offices and home-care situations. The goal is to provide better treatment for chronic wounds such as diabetic ulcers, a common complication of diabetes that can manifest in the feet and other extremities as a result of nerve damage and poor blood circulation. The company claims its technology has been proven in clinical trials, but hasn’t provided any details.

Bacchus Vascular gets $15M for clot-busting device – Bacchus Vascular, a Santa Clara, Calif., developer of devices for local drug treatment of blood clots, raised $15 million in an extension of a recent recapitalization round, VentureWire reports. Investors included Vertical Group, Warburg Pincus, Kaiser Permanente Venture Development and Bacchus founder Thomas J. Fogarty.

Bacchus makes and markets a system it calls Trellis, which is a minimally invasive, catheter-based device consisting of two inflatable balloons and a “dispersion wire.” Physicians thread the catheter through the clot and inflate balloons at each end of it, then infuse a clot-busting drug directly into the clot. The dispersion wire then mechanically helps break up the clot, whose remains are then sucked out through the catheter. Bacchus is currently focused on deep-vein thrombosis, which are large clots usually located in the legs. Its device was approved in 2005, and the company intends to use the new funds to expand its marketing efforts.

Bacchus restarted with a $7.6 million recapitalization in June 2006 after apparently exhausting the patience of two initial investors, Three Arch Partners and De Novo Ventures, who haven’t participated in subsequent fundings. Prior to the recapitalization, Bacchus had raised $40 million, according to VentureWire.

Protein-evolution company Modular Genetics gets $1.2M – Modular Genetics, a Cambridge, Mass., biotech that engineers new proteins with enhanced function, raised $1.2 million toward an expected $5 million fourth funding round, VentureWire reports. Individual investors provided the funding.

Modular makes a gene-engineering system it calls the CombiGenex that can shuffle and recombine genes in order to make modified or novel proteins. By making thousands of slightly different molecules and then screening for the ones with improved functions, Modular aims to “evolve” new proteins for therapeutic uses.

PharmatrophiX gets $300K for Alzheimer’s disease prevention drugs – San Francisco’s PharmatrophiX (no Web site), a biotech working on drugs that prevent neurodegenerative disease, received a $300,000 grant from the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation. Founded by Stanford researcher Frank Longo, PharmatrophiX is developing a class of drugs that mimic the activity of proteins called neurotrophins, which aid in the development, health and survival of neurons.

Light Sciences Oncology withdraws IPO – Bellevue, Wash.-based Light Sciences Oncology, a developer of light-activated chemotherapy, withdrew its $96.6 million IPO, citing “unfavorable market conditions.” Light Sciences becomes the seventh life-science startup to yank an IPO filing this year.

Light Sciences has kept hope alive for an awfully long time. The company originally filed its registration statement in April 2006, but hasn’t amended it since September of that year. Light Sciences raised $30 million in a second funding round last July, despite its still-active IPO registration.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this item misstated PolyRemedy’s systems as “robotically apply[ing] wound dressings.” I’ve restated that to match the description in the second paragraph, which accurately describes the systems.

Ceres, a Thousand Oaks, Calif. company seeking ways to produce plant biomass more efficiently for use in a new generation of alternative fuels, has raised a $75 million in financing.

Ceres has studied and collected sequenced plant genes to find fuels for cellulosic ethanol production, in order to create a more efficient and cleaner version of ethanol — which it hopes will replace gasoline as a transportation fuel. It’s just one several well-backed companies pursuing this.

Ceres works with switchgrass, sorghum, miscanthus, energycane and other woody species. One of its first seed products, a high-yielding switchgrass cultivar, is scheduled for commercial launch in 2009.

The financing was led by Warburg Pincus, and was made in the form of debt that will later convert into stock.

The company has previously raised $77 million including from Artal Luxembourg, Oxford Bioscience Partners, GIMV, H&Q, KBC, Monsanto Co., Oppenheimer Funds, QuestMark Partners, Towerbrook Capital Partner and Soros.

Back in 2001, the company’s private value was nearly $200 million, but no word on what it is now.

Featured companies: Bravo Health, InfraReDx, MedAssets, Prestwick Pharmaceuticals

Prestwick Pharma raises $20M for neuro drugs — Specialty pharma Prestwick Pharmaceuticals, a Washington, D.C., firm that acquires cast-off drug candidates to treat neurological conditions, raised $20 million from existing investors, VentureWire reports (subscription required). Among those participating in the funding were Atlas Venture, Sofinnova Ventures, Vivo Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, Warburg Pincus and Pequot Ventures.

Prestwick said it raised the funds to acquire additional drug candidates. The company filed to go public in 2005, but pulled its filing in December of that year.

InfraReDx aims for $40M to detect artery plaque — Burlington, Mass.-based InfraReDx aims to raise $40 million in a “mezzanine” financing to launch its artery-plaque diagnostic system, VentureWire reports. The company is talking to existing and potential new investors, including VC firms and hedge funds.

InfraReDx is developing a near-infrared spectroscopy system for the detection of arterial plaque, which can rupture and create blood clots that could lead to a heart attack. The company expects to complete a clinical trial in October that could lead to approval of the device.

Bravo Health raises undisclosed sum for acquisition — Bravo Health, a venture-backed provider in the Medicare prescription-drug coverage plan formerly known as Elder Health, raised an undisclosed sum in an eighth funding round, VentureWire reports. The funding covers the company’s recent acquisition of a Philadelphia Medicare provider called Senior Health.

Investors included all backers from the company’s previous funding round, a group that includes New Enterprise Associates, Frazier Healthcare Ventures, CCP Equity Partners, Salix Ventures, Alpha Partners, Coleman Swenson Hoffman Booth, Franklin Venture Capital, Frontenac Co., GE Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, Riggs Capital Partners, Sprout Group, Wasatch Venture Fund and Woodbrook.

MedAssets, healthcare IT provider, aims for $230M IPO — MedAssets, an Alpharetta, Ga., provider of healthcare IT and consulting services, filed to raise up to $230 million in an initial offering. The company aims to help community hospitals increase “revenue capture” and “cash collections” and to manage “non-labor expense categories.”

Oddly, MedAsset doesn’t appear to have yet maximized its own revenue capture, as it posted a net loss of $23.8 million last year on revenues of $177.9 million.

Vringo, a company that lets you choose video clips and then send them to your buddies as ringtones, has raised $12 million in second round of financing.

You download a software to your mobile phone, which lets you select from a group of clips. You then call your buddies and they’ll get the clip. They, in turn, can pass it own to their friends. Video ringtone offerings aren’t new (see Jamster and Psiloc, for example), but Vringo seeks to extend sharing features.

The financing is led by New York’s Warburg Pincus, which typically invests in later stage companies. Vringo, based in Jerusalem, is in a public testing phase, but will soon launch formally in the United States, Europe and Asia. Its seeking to strike deals with mobile carriers. The investment follows $4.2 million from individual angel investors last year. The company says it needs the cash to unleash a major marketing campaign, given the large number of companies already distributing video on mobile phones.

The company plans to make money by selling premium video content to users. It plans to allow them to then share it for free, which means Vringo will have to sign content licensing deals with publishers.

Vringo’s ringtones also include avatars, greeting cards or photos.

Dan Ciporin, former CEO of Shopping.com, is chairman of the company.

It was founded last year by venture capitalist Jon Medved, now chief executive and David Goldfarb, now chief technology officer.