LAVCA in São Paulo

LAVCA recently co-hosted the Empower Breakfast: For Women in Tech with Cubo Itaú and Google for Startups.

This event brought together women professionals in tech for insights and connections. LAVCA's Director of Research, Emanuel Hernandez, and Director of Member Relations and Strategy, Marcelo A. Pizzato Dantas, attended the event in São Paulo. The LAVCA team shared key data on women founders and investors in Latin American tech.

Learn more about LAVCA's Gender Diversity initiative here.

LAVCA Tech Brasil

We look forward to seeing venture investors on Wednesday, 21 August in São Paulo for this year’s meeting. 

The program will include keynote fireside chats, breakout sessions and networking opportunities designed to build meaningful relationships amongst investors active in the region.

LAVCA Members are welcome to join us for a Members-only dinner right after the program. 

LAVCA Tech Brasil 2024 is made possible with support from LAVCA’s Tech Growth Members. Special thanks to Google for hosting, along with AWS, Qualcomm Ventures, MercadoLibre, Riverwood Capital and SVB, for their continued partnership.

Contact Marcelo Pizzato at mpizzato@lavca.org with questions.

Deals

▸ Mexican fintech Clip raised USD100m in new funding from Morgan Stanley Tactical Value and an undisclosed investor in line with the USD2b valuation from its USD250m Series D led by Viking Global And SoftBank in 2021. 

• Morgan Stanley Tactical Value will join Clip’s board.
• Clip secured a USD50m revolving credit facility from Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and HSBC in September 2022. 

▸ KASZEK led a ~USD21m Series A for Kanastra, a Brazil-based capital markets infrastructure startup, with participation from Atlantico, Valor Capital Group, Quona Capital, QED Investors and Actyus.

• Valor Capital and Quona Capital co-led a USD13m seed round in June 2023.

▸ Castle Island Ventures led USD15.5m Series A for Félix Pago, a Mexico-based WhatsApp cross-border money transfer service, with participation from Switch Ventures, HTwenty, Contour Venture Partners and Mercado Libre’s MELI fund. 

▸ Prósperos, a US-based cross-border remittances startup, raised a USD3m seed round from undisclosed investors. 

▸ Blueberry Protocol, a Panama-based decentralized prime brokerage terminal, raised a USD2.5m Series A from undisclosed investors. 

▸ LEGALTECH | SRM Ventures invested ~USD1.4m in Litipay, a Brazilian judicial credit acquisition startup. 

▸ HEALTHTECH | Amarena VC led USD900k round for FarmaLoop, a Chilean online pharmacy startup. 

▸ Hiker Ventures invested~USD750k in Semexe, a Brazilian bike and cycling accessories marketplace. 

• DOMO Invest led a USD1m seed round in June 2021.

▸ CVC | Krealo, the CVC arm of Credicorp, invested in Shinkansen, a Chilean B2B  payment infrastructure platform.

• ALLVP led a USD3m seed round in June 2023.

▸ HETECH | Yapoli, a Brazilian corporate governance management startup, raised ~USD190k from FAPESP.

M&As

▸ M&A | Tul, a Colombian supply chain management platform connecting construction material manufacturers with SMEs, acquired Sooper, a Brazilian home improvement startup. 

• Tul secured USD7.7m in debt from Bancolombia in November 2022; 8VC led a USD181m Series B in January of the same year. Other investors include monashees, SoftBank, Lightrock and Coatue. 
• Sooper raised USD5.7m in a round led by Canary and KASZEK in January 2022. 
• Sooper CEO Rafaela Khouri will lead Tul in Brazil. 

▸ M&A | Incode, an SF-based authentication platform with operations in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and Argentina, acquired MetaMap, a US identity verification platform.

• Incode raised a USD220m round in December 2021 from SoftBank, General Atlantic and others; DILA Capital led a USD10m round in December 2019. 
• MetaMap’s investors include Craft Ventures, Tribe Capital and First Round.

Funds

▸ Index Ventures is looking to raise a combined USD2.3b in fresh capital across a growth (USD1.5b) and early-stage fund (USD800m) to invest globally. 

• Index Ventures’s recent deals in LatAm include Liquido, Pomelo, Moises and Sofia

▸ CLOUD | AWS will invest USD230m worth of cloud credits which includes access to compute and varied infrastructure resources for early-stage startups globally. 

▸ JAMAICA | The Development Bank of Jamaica (DBJ) committed USD4.9m to a venture fund that will be managed by Mscalle and will invest in tech-enabled startups in the Caribbean. 

• Mscalle is led by CEO Ugo Ikemba. 

▸ CVC | The Bakery, a UK-based corporate innovation platform, partnered with Brazilian investors Staged Ventures and Pipe Ventures to launch a Brazilian-focused joint venture to manage corporate participation in direct deals. 

News

▸ SATELLITES | Project Kuiper, Amazon’s low Earth orbit satellite broadband network, partnered with Sky Brasil and DIRECTV Latin America to offer affordable connectivity services across seven LatAm countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Uruguay.

• Situational awareness: Starlink launched operations in Brazil a year ago. 

▸ CLEANTECH | Microsoft agreed to purchase 8m tons of carbon removal credits from BTG Pactual’s Timberland Investment Group, the bank’s timberland manager in Latin America and the US with USD7b in AUM.

• This is the largest known carbon dioxide removal credit transaction to date, according to Microsoft. 

▸ PROPTECH | Leasity, a Chilean residential real estate management platform,  launched operations in Colombia. 

• FEN Ventures invested in 2022. 

▸ DRONES | Researchers are using drone images and AI previously built to count cattle to estimate human crowd sizes in Brazil. 

• “Protest size matters… A small versus large crowd is an important signaling device to a regime about the relative strength of the opposition, especially in authoritarian environments where information is otherwise hard to come by.”

People & Programs

▸ Congrats to Mariana Donangelo of KASZEK for being appointed as the newest Investment Committee member at Scale-Up Ventures. 

• Other IC members include Igor Piquet (Endeavor Catalyst), Anderson Thees (Itau), Arthur O’Keefe (Bamboo), Laura Constantini (Astella Investimentos), Sergio Furio (Creditas) and Fabiana Fagundes (FM/Derraik).

▸ Antler Brasil opened registrations for the fifth edition of its 10-week residency and startup incubation program for September 2024. 

•  Early-stage founders have the opportunity to connect with co-founders and may also secure an initial investment upon completing the program.

▸ REGISTER NOW | LAVCA will be hosting LAVCA Week on 8-11 October in New York. Registration is now open for LAVCA Members. 

Global Tech

▸ Sign up for GPCA’s Global Tech Brief, a monthly newsletter that covers tech activity in Asia, Latin America, Africa, CEE and the Middle East. 

LAVCA is now part of GPCA, the Global Private Capital Association, and will continue to operate as a parallel membership organization with its own dedicated team and board.