Concur, which helps businesses manage travel and expense accounts, is making a couple of big moves to broaden its international reach today. The company said it has invested $40 million to obtain a minority stake in Cleartrip, a privately held online travel-booking service in India. Redmond, WA-based Concur said it’s forming a marketing partnership with Cleartrip, and opening a Concur office in India.

If the Cleartrip news sounds a little familiar, it should: Concur (NASDAQ: CNQR) started the year off by acquiring TripIt, a San Francisco-based online travel itinerary manager, for as much as $120 million. Concur subsequently made TripIt into its front door for mobile travel booking.

Concur already has offices around the globe, including Hong Kong, Sweden, France, England, Germany, and the Czech Republic. In a statement, CEO Steve Singh said the Indian expansion and Cleartrip partnership will help Concur reach “a travel sector that is expected to grow to over $20 billion by 2012.” Concur had previously worked with businesses in India, but clearly saw more room to grow.

The Cleartrip partnership sounds like it will function much how TripIt is set up for Concur in the U.S.—funneling travel booking for business customers through that interface, and tying it into the Concur tracking system on the back end. It’ll be really interesting to see how far Concur takes this expansion of using consumer-friendly tools to manage business travel— two key moves in two quarters obviously amounts to a big bet on that side of the business.

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Seattle-based Ground Truth, a mobile measurement and intelligence startup, is announcing a new $7 million Series B funding round today, led by new investor Emergence Capital Partners. OpenAir Ventures, another new investor, also participated, as did existing backers Voyager Capital and Steamboat Ventures.

Ground Truth CEO and co-founder Sterling Wilson calls the deal “great confirmation of what we’re doing.” The startup came out of stealth mode in January. It provides data and analysis on how consumers use the Internet on mobile devices—things like traffic estimates for a large number of sites, how long people visit those sites, and what other sites they visit. The basic idea is to help advertisers, publishers, mobile operators, and media companies make more money on the mobile Internet.

What Ground Truth has going for it is strong relationships with wireless carriers and other partners who have access to mobile data, and patent-pending technology for processing all that data. Big players like comScore, Nielsen, Hitwise, Google, and Quantcast have lots of data on the traditional Web, but don’t yet have the equivalent information on mobile Web use.

Those advantages have helped Ground Truth amass raw data from about 3 million mobile subscribers, and update it weekly instead of every month or two like other services. (Some recent trends Ground Truth has unearthed: social networking is really exploding on mobile devices, and mobile-centric sites make up the majority of website visits on mobile devices.) Wilson says the company has “dozens” of customers and data partners, but declined to be more specific, other than to say its strategy has been “more of the same” in terms of signing up “infrastructure providers and wireless operators.” The company’s revenue model is based on paid subscriptions, not advertising.

One connection that helped seal the VC deal announced today is that Emergence Capital co-founder Jason Green had previously invested in Seattle-based aQuantive together with Voyager Capital; Emergence also has collaborated with Steamboat Ventures on investments. Meanwhile, OpenAir brings to the table strong expertise in the mobile industry and has worked with Emergence as well. (Also, $7 million is a pretty healthy amount, and it sounds like the company got it at a decent step-up in valuation compared to its $2.6 million Series A funding last year.)

The new money will be used “to expand the product offering throughout the year,” Wilson says. Part of that means going global. Ground Truth will identify countries that have a lot of mobile … Next Page »

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Now here’s an interesting deal from a company we’ve had our eye on for a while. Bellevue, WA-based Livemocha, which runs a popular language-learning website, announced today it has raised $8 million in Series B financing, led by new investor August Capital in Menlo Park, CA. Existing venture investor Maveron, based in Seattle, also participated in the round.

It’s one of the Seattle area’s biggest funding deals in the consumer Internet sector in all of 2009. And somehow a full year has gone by since I last wrote about this scrappy Web startup with a notable Ping-Pong culture. Livemocha says it has built the world’s largest online language-learning community, with more than 4.8 million registered members in 200-plus countries. The site offers courses in more than 30 languages, and members can communicate with each other and practice language skills (matching native speakers and learners) using text and video.

The latest funding round “underscores the large, disruptive potential of Livemocha,” said Shirish Nadkarni, the company’s CEO and co-founder, in a statement. “We are excited and well-positioned to realize a very ambitious vision for the future of language learning.”

Livemocha previously raised a $6 million Series A round led by Maveron in December 2007. The company says the new money will be used to accelerate its “platform innovation and new partnership launches,” which are planned for the next six to 12 months. Its revenues aren’t disclosed but are “growing rapidly,” according to a company statement. Livemocha says it has customers in 97 countries who pay for premium services.

It’s interesting to note that August Capital is working together with Maveron. The Seattle-based venture firm recently announced a new San Francisco office headed by partner Amy Errett. She sits on Livemocha’s board.

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A couple of news tidbits involving China in the past week have made me look more closely at what local startups and companies are doing to expand there. On Thursday, Seattle-based Airbiquity, a wireless communications firm focused on the auto industry, announced it has entered the Chinese market, branding itself locally as Ai Bi Ke Communications Technology and setting up an office in Chengdu. The move makes good sense, given China’s burgeoning car culture.

And yesterday, Seattle-based wireless startup Movaya announced its Chinese mobile-development team, also in Chengdu, is teaming up with PressOK Entertainment’s software teams in Russia and Belarus to develop mobile games. Ken Myer, the CEO of the Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA), told me last month that he thinks the Chinese market for mobile games is pretty far behind the U.S.—but it could be a good time to get in on other mobile software applications.

Not sure what it all means yet, but it’s clear there’s a pattern. Chinese talent, companies, and market opportunities are becoming more embedded in the fabric of Seattle-area innovation. While the economic downturn could lead more U.S. companies to outsource jobs and services, they are also trying to tap a new global market. And on the flip side, Chinese universities and companies are looking to develop leadership roles and move up the value stream. It’s a compelling situation to watch.

A few other recent highlights:

—Bellevue, WA-based Formotus and Seattle-based Mobile Semiconductor talked to me about building relationships with strategic investors and partners in China. The mobile companies were part of a five-company WTIA contingent that toured China in October. One key takeaway was that building these relationships and understanding the market takes time and patience.

—Issaquah, WA-based McObject, a maker of data management software, has expanded in China this fall, adding a team in Beijing doing work on embedded databases. McObject, which was also part of the WTIA tour, already has a presence in the Chinese market, but is looking to accelerate its growth there.

—Oberon Media, a New York-based developer of games and platforms with a Seattle publishing office (I-Play), scored a $20 million strategic investment from Hong Kong-based Infinity Equity in October. The partnership represents a strong effort to establish an Oberon presence on the ground in China.

—It’s definitely not just about outsourcing anymore. Bellevue-based Intellectual Ventures, headed by Nathan Myhrvold and Edward Jung, has opened an office in Beijing. Its goal is to work with local universities and institutes to help commercialize inventions, as well as keep tabs on foreign competition for ideas and intellectual property. The company’s Asian expansion is being led by global technology head Patrick Ennis, who spoke with me recently.

—Microsoft Research Asia, based in Beijing, celebrated its 10th anniversary last month. The lab has become an epicenter for computer-science research in several areas, including graphics, user interfaces, multimedia, search and advertising, and now cloud computing and theory. Three of the lab’s managing directors have gone on to become Microsoft vice presidents in Redmond.

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Sometimes you just have to write the story even when you don’t know all the details yet. This is one of those times. This is the story of H-Farm, an Italian design and investment firm, coming to America.

But it’s only Part One of the story—a preview, really. That’s because it won’t be until next month that I sit down with Riccardo Donadon, the founder of H-Farm, when he visits Seattle. In the meantime, my Italian isn’t what it used to be, so I can’t just call up the company and start asking questions (OK, I never could). So in case I missed something, please do comment or let me know.

The story begins in 2005, when Donadon founded H-Farm as the first private Italian incubator of startups. Before that, he was an Internet entrepreneur, having created the online shopping site Mall Italy Lab (sold to Infostrada in 1999) and E-Tree (sold to Etnoteam Group in 2001). He started H-Farm in the scenic countryside of Cà Tron, near Venice and his hometown of Treviso. The company’s second principal, Maurizio Rossi, joined as an investor. Rossi came from the fashion and design industry, having worked for LVMH and sports-brand marketing firm Vista Point.

It’s an intriguing combination of design and technology expertise—and it shows in the eight or so companies that have been incubated by H-Farm so far. The group includes H-art, an interactive media company that does design for high-end brands like Gucci and Armani, and Zooppa, a user-generated advertising firm. H-Farm’s portfolio also has startups in mobile, graphics, consumer Internet, and retail—including social-shopping site Wishpot, based in Seattle and profiled here last week.

Which brings us to an even bigger Seattle connection. It turns out H-Farm isn’t just an incubator. “Using design thinking,” the company’s website says, “H-Farm is going to develop a worldwide interconnected network of innovative technology and new media start-ups.” In other words, besides spinning off companies, H-Farm seems to want to help its U.S. startups gain a foothold in the European market, while also introducing its broader portfolio to U.S. customers—and that requires setting up an office here.

Last month, H-Farm started renting office space near Seattle’s Pioneer Square—sharing it with Wishpot and another startup in stealth mode. It is H-Farm’s only office in the U.S., and the company plans to make it the major center of operations outside of Italy. H-Farm’s website says, “This operation will endow it with the possibility of significant growth on the other side of the Atlantic as well as the chance to increase its projects and activities.” Why Seattle? Max Ciccotosto, Wishpot’s co-founder, says, “They’d looked in the Bay Area, but they really got feedback that Seattle was the right market for them.”

To me, the West Coast makes sense for H-Farm’s expertise, and I suspect the choice of Seattle boiled down to personal and business relationships in the area. Ciccotosto, a native of Italy, says he originally met H-Farm last year through one of his investors, Rob Monster of Monster Venture Partners. “Rob said, ‘There’s a guy [from H-Farm] coming from Venice, can you meet him?’” It turned out Ciccotosto was going to a fashion-industry party hosted by Nordstrom’s that night, so he relayed the message to the H-Farm visitor, a senior employee named Marco Janeczek (who was born in Poland but raised in Italy). Evidently, the cocktails and fashion models were a hit—and pretty soon Ciccotosto was on his way to securing a Series A investment from H-Farm. The Italian firm has also gained several advisors around town, so it’s a well-connected operation.

I’ll be getting the scoop on H-Farm’s local strategy from Donadon soon. In the meantime, it doesn’t look like the firm is soliciting wide-ranging funding proposals from early-stage startups, à la incubators like Founder’s Co-op or Y Combinator, which we’ve been covering at Xconomy. So its role in the local innovation community is less clear at this point, but its outside perspective could be valuable. “These guys come with heavy global expertise,” says Ciccotosto.

H-Farm is accepting proposals through the end of September in a very specific area: new applications for the Apple iPhone. The company says it has received more than 100 proposals so far, and will invest $250,000 in the winner(s). It also says it will make a new call for proposals in October, in an area yet to be announced, so stay tuned.

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