Canadian venture capital firm Real Ventures provided $1.1 million to Sausalito, California-based atVenu for its seed stage funding round, PE HUB Canada reported citing information from the blog of the merchandise sales management platform.
The California-based firm gives real-time financial tools to provide support to the product sales of artists in their live shows. The company's atVenu Merch Manager was rolled out last year which, the company said, is now the platform used by 600 artists. Moreover, performers who utilize the web and mobile app of atVenu were able to collectively sell more than $52 million in merchandise and music last year. The firm was also able to settle 12,000 shows worldwide in 2013, the company said in its blog post.
Proceeds from the latest round will be used for the company's continued growth. It will also be utilized to develop more features to its platform, the blog post said.
Information from its website showed that atVenu initially launched its merchandise management features to a closed invite list. However, the post about the funding said the company has now made the self-sign up functionality available. This means that all artists will be able to use the platform. The company also said that their product is "now the standard for many professional merchant organizations as the critical tool to provide immediate and accurate data from the road to management."
Real Ventures is a Montreal-based venture firm that looks for opportunities in early-stage IT and internet-focused companies. It also recently told PE HUB Canada that it is getting ready to hold a first close of Real Ventures III which aims to raise $100 million.
Late last year, Ottawa's Venture Capital Action Plan or VCAP recognized Real Ventures as one of four "high performing" venture capital firms in Canada and gave it a $50 million award, PE HUB Canada reported.
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