Auction- and ecommerce-management vendor Andale Inc. announced it closed a new round of financing and is using these new funds to create a set of "smart" services that provide buyers and sellers with all the information and enhanced tools needed to enable transparent buying and selling on auction sites like eBay. Andale said it raised a $2.7 million round of financing from existing investors Accel Partners; Mohr, Davidow Venture Partners; Oak Hill Venture Partners; and from new individual investors, giving it a total of $64 million in financing.

Andale is the exclusive provider of hit-counters on eBay, an agreement that was recently renewed for 3 years. This gives the company the ability to measure buyer interest and traffic to 80% of all items sold on eBay. Andale has combined this information with sales data from the last 52 weeks on eBay and other proprietary data sources to create a repository of pre- and post-sale information for online auctions.

Munjal Shah, Andale CEO, hopes the new tools will provide eBay users, sellers in particular, with data to help them make better-informed decisions when it comes to auction transactions. Andale will make some tools available to users for free, others will be available for a monthly fee.

Andale will unveil its new class of smart e-commerce information services next week during the eBay Live conference in Orlando.

http://www.andale.com