Funding Daily: The discovery edition

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Discovery rules. No, not the Discovery Channel. News discovery. Talent discovery. Discovery of trends and anomalies in companies’ proprietary data. The key is finding out about stuff you’d never heard of before. And these freshly funded startups can help you do just that.

Chrono raises $32M

Chrono Therapeutics‘ wearable, called StopSmart, injects a tiny bit of nicotine into the wearer’s bloodstream at timed intervals. In this way it’s similar to the patch, but StopSmart gives the wearer some control over when that happens. Timing the introduction of the nicotine can help the user deal with cravings, the company says. And some big names in the venture capital and healthcare world believe it. Waltham, Mass.-based Chrono said today it’s taken a sizable $32 million funding round to further develop the device. Canaan Partners led the round.
5AM Ventures, Fountain Healthcare Partners, Mayo Clinic, and GE Ventures also participated.

Freshdesk raises $31M

Just one month after Zendesk’s stellar initial public offering, competing help-desk startup Freshdesk has raised some major cash from a valuable new supporter. Freshdesk successfully pitched the investors at Google Capital, the mid- to late-stage venture capital wing of the tech giant, which poured millions into the help-desk business along with Accel Partners and Tiger Global Management, Freshdesk announced today. Altogether, Freshdesk pulled in $31 million in the round.

Read more on VentureBeat: Google Capital jumps into $31M round for Freshdesk

SiSense gets $30M

Business-intelligence software company SiSense announced $30 million in new funding today, solidifying its position as it puts up with lots of other venture-backed business intelligence startups and tools from legacy vendors. SiSense takes care of cleaning up data and preparing it for analysis. Then people can visualize data, create web-based dashboards, and pull up and adjust those dashboards on desktops and mobile devices. DFJ Growth led the new round of funding. Battery Ventures, Genesis Partners, and Opus Capital also participated. To date SiSense has raised $50 million.

Vizury raises $16M

Bangalore-based digital customer-relationship management firm Vizury today announced a $16 million Series C funding round led by Intel Capital with participation from Ascent Capital and existing investors, Nokia Growth Partners and Inventus Capital Partners. This brings the total funds raised by Vizury to $27 million; Ojas Ventures had participated in the two earlier rounds.

Read the press release.

HackerRank raises $9.2M

HackerRank has built a recruiting tool that does away with old-school resumes and applications and replaces them with fun challenges and puzzles that show off an applicant’s skills. The new tool caters specifically to developer recruitment. Whether or not it will catch on as the new rage in technical recruiting, HackerRank has managed to win over investors. The company is announcing $9.2 million in a second round of institutional funding today.
Khosla Ventures led the round, with additional participation from Battery Ventures, Peeyush Ranjan, Greg Badros, and Dan Rubinstein, among others.

Visual Unity raises $7.2M

Over-the-top (OTT) platform and multiscreen solution provider Visual Unity announced today an investment of $7.2 million by 3TS Capital Partners. This investment will strengthen Visual Unity’s delivery of end-to-end OTT solutions on a global scale.

Read the press release.

5app grabs $5.1M

5app, the mobile enterprise enabling company, today announces the closing of its $5.1m seed round, led by Beckman Group. The funding allows 5app to bring to market a suite of new products for enterprises and communications services providers. 5app’s first product is an enterprise app store and DIY app builder service for businesses, with the company launching both free and premium services today.

Read the press release.

ScalingData raises $4.4M

ScalingData, a stealth-mode startup working on a big data application for IT operations people, announced today a $4.4 million round of new funding. General Catalyst led the round. Google Ventures and Brian Stevens also participated. The company employs 10 people now and will hit the 20-person mark with the help of this funding, chief executive Omer Trajman wrote in an email to VentureBeat. The startup is working with the Hadoop open-source software for handling lots of different kinds of data, and it’s now working with two Fortune 500 customers for a beta version of its application, Trajman wrote.

Nuzzel grabs $1.7M

News aggregation startup Nuzzel has raised a fresh $1.7 million round of seed funding from a set of notable tech investors, the company announced today. The new round includes names such as Chis Sacca and Matt Mazzeo of Lowercase Capital, Hunter Walk and Satya Patel of Homebrew, DG, DeNA, and many angel investors like ESPN exec Ryan Spoon, media investor Gordon Crawford, and others. Nuzzel founder (and former Friendster cofounder) Jonathan Abrams told VentureBeat that the startup will use the additional funding to expand its current four-person team to build a Nuzzel Android app and further develop its news discovery technology.

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