Polyvore is a fashion website that has a drag and drop interface for mixing and matching clothes from different stores.  Polyvore recently raised $5.6 million in capital from Matrix Partners.  Dana Stalder of Matrix will be joining as a Board member of Polyvore.

The previous round of funding that Polyvore had was $2.5 million from Benchmark Capital and other angel investors.  Stadler joined Matrix last year after previously working at PayPal.

“I think e-commerce as it has been done for the last 10 to 15 years on the Internet doesn’t work particularly well for soft goods — people are buying books the same way they’re buying skirts online,” stated Stadler. “This site has the ability to revolutionize e-commerce and the apparel category.”

Gilt Groupe Inc. announced that the company has raised $43 million from General Atlantic and Matrix Partners.  General Atlantic led the round of funding.  Matrix Partners raised the Series A and B rounds.

Gilt Groupe launched the website Gilt.com in November 2007.  Gilt.com sells luxury and designer goods at members-only prices.  Since launching, the company quintupled membership in the last year.  There are about 1.3 million registered members in the U.S.  There are over 200,000 on their 5 month old Japanese website.

“We couldn’t be happier that General Atlantic has chosen to invest in Gilt Groupe, and look forward to working with Anton Levy and the GA team,” stated Gilt Groupe CEO Susan Lyne. “The company’s impressive track record and investment philosophy make them ideal partners and a valuable resource as we execute on our aggressive growth plan.”

The company plans to launch a service called Gilt Fuse, which focuses on fashion for younger members.  Gilt also plans to launch a travel website called jetsetter.com.

CloudSwitch is a cloud computing company based in Burlington, MA.  CloudSwitch recently announced that they have raised $8 million in their second round of funding and have hired John McEleney as President and CEO.

The $8 million in funding was led by Commonwealth Capital Ventures and includes Matrix Partners and Atlas Ventures. Thus far, CloudSwitch has raised $15 million in funding.  Before joining CloudSwitch, McEleney was the chief executive at SolidWorks Corporation.

[via Boston.com]

Conductor is a New York City based firm that measures SEO and optimization for Fortune 500 companies and SMBs.  The company recently announced a $10 million round of funding led by Matrix Partners and involving previous investor FirstMark Capital.

The company focuses on getting links to their site to improve search ranks rather than search engine marketing.  Conductor charges clients by approaching publishers on behalf of the Fortune 500 companies or SMBs for inbound links.  Conductor will then offer the companies analytics for their inbound links.

Conductor was started by Seth Besmertnik back in 2005.  Back then the company was known as LinkExperts.  BusinessInsider named the company as one of the Most Valuable Digital Startups with an estimated value of $100 million.  The problem with Conductor’s business model is that selling paid links is a violation of Google’s quality guidelines.

[via AlarmClock]

Seventymm.com is just like Netflix, but is based in Bangalore, India.  Seventymm Services Pvt. Ltd., the owner of Seventymm.com has recently $12 million in Series C from NEA-IndoUS Ventures.  The $12 million Series C round of funding brings Seventymm’s total funding to $22 million.  ePlanet Ventures invested $2 million in 2005 and Matrix Partners invested $8 million.  As part of the Series C funding, Vani Kola will be joining the Seventymm Board of Directors.

Through some of the funding, Seventymm acquired Madhouse, a Delhi, India based online DVD company last year.  Prior to the acquisition, Madhouse raised $228,000 in seed funding.

Reliance ADAG was supposedly was rumored to be in talks for buying out Seventymm.com recently.  With this round of funding, Seventymm plans on expanding their reach and improving their home delivery services.  Seventymm offers their services in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi, and Chandigarh.  Seventymm currently employs 400 people.

Related Links:
1. Seventymm.com
2. NEA-IndoUS Ventures
3. VCCircle

Amount Invested: Undisclosed
Series: Angel
TheBig is a video channel website that is based in India. The company has raised angel funding from Suhel Seth and Swapan Seth. Suhel is a Managing Partner with Counselage and Swapan is the CEO of Equus Red Cell. Gaggan Duggal and Chetan Sharma were also investors. Chetan is a consultant for ZeeTV and Duggal is the founder of Matrix, a brand name in international calling cards.

TheBig does not focus on strictly user generated content, but also has original programming. Some of TheBig’s original programming includes Sudarshan: The Lonely Boy, Professor Aye Tein, News With Leela Loose, and Agony Tau.

“With the progressive emancipation of bandwidth and the acutely swift growth of the Internet, we see a long term play in this space. Www.thebig.tv is also very different from a concept like YouTube. YouTube only uploads third party provided content. With www.thebig.tv, there is a lot of content creation from the site itself. Furthermore, over time we will also be offering films that can be downloaded,” stated Swapan Seth.
[Source: alarm:clock]

Amount Invested: $250-$500K
Series: Seed Financing
iFamily gained popularity as a Facebook geneaology application. Below is a screen shot of the application when it is active in a profile:

iFamily’s investor is a boutique investment banking company called CountryRoad Capital. iFamily has about 83,000-plus total profiles and the company was recently given a valuation of about $1 million.

“This investment from CountryRoad Capital will allow iFamily to accelerate its product and business development and sustain its leadership position as the first and foremost genealogy application on Facebook,” stated Ilya Nikolayev, the CEO of iFamily. “CountryRoad has a distinguished track record of identifying and catalyzing unique emerging technology opportunities and we are pleased to partner with CountryRoad’s Managing Partner Andrew Merkatz and his team. Rather than take an existing genealogy application and try to bend it to work within Facebook, and rather than develop a competing family oriented social network, we have chosen to build this application from the bottom up to fully leverage and integrate the power of Facebook. I believe this market positioning is unique and will allow us to drive significant value for our shareholders.”

CountryRoad Capital also invested in SocialMedia.com, the parent company of other Facebook Applications: Happy Hour, Trakzor, Foodfight.
[Source: alarm:clock]

Amount Invested: $28 Million Total
Series: Second Round ($14 Million)
Veveo is the company that created Vtap, a mobile video/Internet search service. The company’s official launch date is September 10th according to VentureBeat.

Vtaps’s search technology focuses on predictive technology rather than the number of incoming links that Google’s PageRank uses. An example that VentureBeat provides is that if you type “Gwy,” then Vtap will suggest Gwenyth Paltrow as the top result. And then users can seamlessly watch clips that feature Paltrow in them.

The investors in Veveo include Norwest Venture Partners, Matrix Partners, and North Bridge Venture Partners. Murali Aravamudan is currently the CEO of Veveo and is a former researcher at Bell Labs.
[Source: alarm:clock]

Amount Invested: $1.7 Million
Series: Series A
Vadver is a start-up site that is aiming to become a video-discovery service. Draper Fisher Jurvetson invested $1.7 million in the company. Vadver is run by Patrick Koppula.

Koppula is also part of iLike.com, Gcast.com, GarageBand.com. Vadver is based in San Francisco.
[Source: alarm:clock]

Amount Invested: $6.75 Million Total
Series: 2nd Round ($4.5 Million)
Federated Media Publishing is company that acts as a brokerage for advertisements to be placed on some of the top web publication and news companies including Digg, TechCrunch, BoingBoing, Mashable, Alarm:Clock, Ars Technica, GigaOM, ReadWriteWeb, VentureBeat, Wikia etc. Inevitably, Pulse 2.0 (P2) is aiming to become a client too, but P2 is still in the growth phase.

Federated Media was founded by John Battelle, author of The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture and co-founding editor of Wired. Investors that participated in this round of funding includes JPMorgan and Omidyar Network (started by eBay’s founder).
[Source: PEHub]