Every day, Global University Venturing rounds up the smaller investments from across the university innovation ecosystem in its deal net.
Odaia, a Canada-based spinout of University of Toronto developing software for customer experience analytics, closed a $1.6m seed round yesterday backed by the Ontario government-owned Mars Investment Accelerator Fund (IAF). Mars IAF was joined by Panache Ventures and StandUp Ventures, which co-led the round, as well as Inovia Capital and Women in Technology Venture Fund – a vehicle seeded by state-owned Business Development of Canada’s BDC Capital unit. The cash will help Odaia put in place key technical appointments and customer support ahead of launching its software-as-a-service platform, which automatically analyses customer interactions with the client to prevent cancellations and get a sense of the overall customer experience. University of Toronto’s Early Stage Technology incubator previously joined Toronto Innovation Acceleration Partners – the multi-university commercialisation firm formerly known as Mars Innovation – for Odaia’s pre-seed round of undisclosed size, investing alongside government-funded Ontario Centres of Excellence, venture fund N49P and angel investor Amar Varma.
