Funding Daily: Shar Pei shenanigans

Yesterday, my colleague, Meghan Kelly, brilliantly selected an image of a dog wearing blue jeans as the header photo for Funding Daily. This was because company called Blue Jeans raised a hefty round of funding. Taking her lead and running with it, I have selected today’s photo along the same lines — a dog talking on the phone.

NewVoiceMedia raises $35M to bring call centers to the cloud

NewVoiceMedia has raised $35 million for cloud-based contact center technology. NewVoiceMedia powers an online network that delivers calls through your existing telephone infrastructure. This helps companies set up cloud contact centers, which cost less than traditional systems and have no specific hardware requirements. Bessemer Venture Partners led this round. Read more on VentureBeat.

Gigya raises another $25M to add social & gamification to brand name apps

Social engagement service Gigya closed a new $25 million round of funding, the startup announced today. Gigya attempts to make websites, services, and applications more enjoyable by employing some social gaming mechanics to engage people. Founded in 2006, the Mountain View, Calif.-based startup has raised a total of $70 million in funding to date, from Mayfield Fund, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, Advanced Publications, and Adobe. The new round of funding was led by Greenspring Ventures, with participation from existing investors. Read more on VentureBeat.

Branding Brand gets some funding fun of $9.5M

Branding Brand, which probably does something with brands, got $9.5 million in its second round of funding today. In all seriousness, the company is “m-commerce” engine that keeps a number of huge e-commerce company’s mobile apps afloat. These include Kate Spade, Costco, and Sephora. Insight Venture Partners led the round with participation from eBay Enterprise, Crunchfund, and Lead Edge Capital. The company is headquartered in Pittsburgh and was founded in 2008

Deliv raises $6.8M to beef up its same-day delivery network

Same-day delivery network Deliv announced today that it’s raised $6.85 million in a Series A round led by Upfront Ventures and RPM Ventures, which have previously invested in retail giants like Costco and Starbucks. (Deliv has raised a total of $7.85 million to date.) Deliv, which is sort of like a retail-focused Fed Ex, plugs into retailers’ websites, giving online customers the option of getting purchases delivered on the same day from local stores. Read more on VentureBeat. 

Unmetric blasts your company with social media data, gets $5.5M

Today, Unmetric received $5.5 million in its second round of funding. Unmetric collects social data around Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Pinterest and provides “business intelligence” for its customers The funding today comes from Jafco and Nexus Venture Partners. Read more on VentureBeat.

Plaid raises $2.8M for API that opens banks up to developers

Plaid has raised $2.8 million to grow its application programming interface (API) for banks which makes their data more accessible to developers, enterprises, and ultimately, consumers. The startup is building a developer platform that allows developers to integrate with data from financial institutions and use it to build applications. Spark Capital led this round, with participation from Google Ventures, NEA, Felicis Ventures, and Homebrew Capital. Read more on VentureBeat.

Turkish engineers get $2.5M for HazelCast, an open-source in-memory data grid for Java

HazelCast claims it prevents enterprise applications from drowning in data. It automatically makes data structures in applications running on hundreds of machines aware of each other. Bain Capital Ventures contributed the bulk of this round, with participation from existing angel investors. Read more on VentureBeat. 

LearnBIG gets bigger with $1M

LearnBIG has raised $1 million for its search engine for educational content. There is a lot of educational content out there on the Web, and LearnBIG aimed to make it easier to find what you are looking for. It offers multiple filters like subject, grade level, certification, and so on. It includes links to games, apps, videos, audio, and massively open online courses (MOOCs). Students can write comments and read reviews as well.

TripBAM raises $1M for its hotel shopping service

Hotel search can be a paion, and there are dozens, if not more, services that aim to make it somehow easier. TripBAM announced that it has raised $1 million today to help you find the best deals on hotels. Users make clusters of hotels at their destination, and TripBAM monitors price fluctuations, and notifies you when prices drop. Thayer Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on the hospitality industry, led this round.

Cinegif raised $500K to help make marketing memes

Cinegif has closed $500,000 for its GIF marketing solutions. Using its DIY platform, markets can create GIFs and access analytics about the campaigns. Customers include Hewlett-Packard, the Austin Chronicle. and digital marketing company Pulsepoint. Texas angel investors including the Baylor Angel Network, as well as the Houston Angel Network and its related Texas Halo Fund, contributed to the round for this Austin-based company.