B2B Investment Tracker, June 19-26

The Breakdown: $126.2 million invested
SaaS/Big Data: 80.5%
FinTech: 14%
Logistics: 5.5%

The last seven days in B2B investments were busy, with more than $126 million fueling startups this week. But venture capitalists and backers targeted nearly all of their funding in the data analytics and Software-as-a-Service spaces – sometimes both at the same time. Coincidentally, the industry saw VC action the same week SaaS and data giants fueled the competition: Oracle’s latest earnings report placed the company on a path to soon overtake current B2B SaaS leader Salesforce in market share, while BlackBerry also made headlines with its earnings report highlighting the company’s recent shift focusing on enterprise cloud solutions.

But the newest names in B2B SaaS and data analytics are similarly generating market chatter. More than 80 percent of all funding this week went to either SaaS startups, data analytics startups, or startups that offer software for data analytics.

The funding flood began with France-based startup incubator eFounders, which announced Tuesday (June 23) that it raised $6 million to launch its next round of Software-as-a-Service startups, reports said. The startup studio focuses exclusively on fostering innovation in the SaaS sector and plans to launch six new businesses with the funding, provided by Fotolia co-founder Oleg Tscheltzoff.

That same day, Big Data analytics startup Enigma secured $28.2 million in Series B backing on Tuesday, led by New Enterprise Associates with participation from Two Sigma Ventures and New York City Investment Fund, among others. Reports said Enigma provides companies a platform to manage their own data while providing business users with a public database. Reports said the backing will be used to expand its workforce.

Tuesday was undoubtedly the hotbed of investment action that week for startups that combine SaaS with Big Data enterprise services. Microsoft veteran Bob Muglia’s Snowflake revealed a $45 million investment into its cloud-based business data analytics product, which comes as the startup launches its first product, Snowflake Elastic Data Warehouse. Muglia told reporters that the product runs as a Software-as-a-Service and a cloud application for business users to store and analyze their data.

For startup AtScale, the challenge for businesses using data analytics software Hadoop is taking control of Big Data even when you’re not a data specialist. The company announced Tuesday a $7 million Series A funding round, led by UMC Capital with participation from Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang’s AME Cloud Ventures. AtScale offers businesses software that allows companies to choose business intelligence tools to get the most out of their Hadoop platforms.

Closing out the week was Redis Labs, which announced Thursday (June 25) that it received $15 million in Series B backing. Investors including Bain Capital Ventures, Carmel Ventures and Silicon Valley Bank provided the funds to the company that provides data aggregation and analytics through a NoSQL database. Redis Labs is particularly applicable to work with unstructured data from, for example, social media sites, fine-tuning Redis to offer businesses real-time data analytics. Like Snowflake, Redis Labs offers businesses its products through the cloud or through downloadable software.

Not all investments this past week were within the SaaS and Big Data arena. On Monday (June 22), Fifth Street Finance revealed that it has reached a deal to divest its HFG Holdings specialty lender unit to MidCap Financial. HFG Holdings provides SMEs in the health care industry access to asset-backed and term loan products. According to FSC Chief Executive Officer Todd G. Owens, Fifth Street Finance decided to let go of HFG to refocus its lending business on tech lending and aircraft leasing. MidCap Financial will acquire the health care lending unit to add to its existing operations of providing senior debt business solutions. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed by the companies.

News of the merger coincided with reports that Park Square Capital closed its latest fund at $2.4 billion following contributions from a range of investors. The fund, the Credit Opportunities II senior debt program, follows the closing of the firm’s first senior debt fund, Credit Opportunities I, raised in 2007. The U.K.-based credit provider has provided more than $112 million in investments to leveraged companies across the U.S. and Europe, according to reports. Park Square Managing Partner Robin Doumar said in a statement that with the new fund, the firm will be better positioned to provide institutional capital “as banks retreat further from leveraged lending due to regulatory pressures.”

While most of the attention on Tuesday was paid to SaaS and Big Data, U.K.-based Currency Cloud secured $18 million in Series C funding, announced Tuesday. The startup offers its Payment Engine to an array of other businesses to facilitate cross-border money transfers. It’s a service particularly useful to businesses – according to CEO Mike Laven, most transactions processed by the company stand at around $15,000-$20,000, with some reaching more than $1 million. The funding will be strategically aimed at global expansion and securing new business partners. Reports highlighted the leader of the backing, SAP’s former venture capital unit Sapphire Ventures, as well as Japan eCommerce conglomerate Rakuten. The investors are notable because Currency Cloud is reportedly set to work with SAP to integrate its cross-border money transfer services into SAP products aimed directly at SAP’s enterprise clients. Meanwhile, Currency Cloud’s new relationship with Rakuten will help the firm expand to Asia, Laven said.

Finally, investors showed their support for the B2B on-demand market on Wednesday when it was reported that delivery service startup Dropoff raised $7 million from backers. The Series A funding round, led by Greycroft, will be used to expand the B2B on-demand delivery service in new locations. For the firm’s founder Sean Spector, Dropoff provides the same convenience of B2C on-demand delivery startups to a less crowded market, with the added features necessary to serve the enterprise. “This isn’t just pickup and delivery, this is logistics,” Spector said. “There are delivery windows, timing of pickups, proof of delivery signatures required … these are very different challenges than B2C delivery.”

It was certainly a whirlwind week for B2B investments, and while the $25 million in direct investments of logistics and FinTech startups, plus new activity within the small business funding space, are nothing to scoff at, venture capitalists revealed the rising star of Software-as-a-Service, especially when that service provides businesses with the data analytics capabilities they need to remain competitive in today’s market.