Consumer

Each Friday the Global Corporate Venturing Deal Net rounds up the week’s smaller deals and tracks the emerging companies accessing corporate funds.

Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings and Niantic have joined a series C round for DigiLens that stood at $25m as of May this year and already included Continental.

Tobacco maker Altria is said to be seeking an expanded footprint in the e-cigarette market through a proposed investment in Juul.

Two large and important deals above the $1bn mark in the e-commerce and e-retail space in East Asia appeared in the news last week. Both deals involved telecoms group SoftBank as a corporate backer.

The Rocket Internet-founded e-commerce group, whose investors include Tengelmann and Access Industries, could be valued at up to $2.8bn in the offering.

Alibaba-backed Babytree priced its shares at the foot of its range and will raise $217m at a valuation of $1.5bn, down from $2.2bn earlier this year.

Uniseed has upped its investment in probiotic drink maker Perkii after leading the Queensland spinout’s first $3m round in 2016.

The travel booking platform, backed by Ctrip, Dalian Wanda and Tencent, has priced shares at the bottom of its range and raised $180m in its initial public offering.

Walmart, which closed its $16bn acquisition of a 77% stake in Flipkart in August, has boosted its share of the e-commerce marketplace to 81.3%.

SoftBank's Vision Fund supplied $2bn for the e-commerce marketplace at a $9bn valuation, three years after a $1bn investment by its parent company.