TLDR

📣 Meeting Updates | LAVCA Week 2022

📣 Press Update | LAVCA in São Paulo

📣 Deals | Rounds for Xepelin, Clip, Finaktiva, Draftea, R2, Astro, Credix, Leoparda Electric, Naya Homes, Syntage and Puna Bio

📣 Startup M&A | Ualá acquires Ceiba Créditos; iugu acquires Juno; Frete.com acquires Rotas Brasil and Semantix acquires Zetta

2022 LAVCA Week 

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LAVCA WEEK 2022 | Registration is open for LAVCA Week in New York, October 11-14 at the Conrad New York Downtown in New York City.

Program highlights:

• Keynote Speaker Robert F. Smith, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Vista Equity Partners
   
• Fireside Chat with Hans Tung of GGV and Eric Acher of monashees
   
• Fireside Chat with Martin Escobari, Co-President, Managing Director, and Head of General Atlantic Latin America and Cesar Carvalho, CEO of Gympass

Breakout Discussions: 

• Growth Capital During a Global Slowdown with Shu Nyatta of Bicycle and Dileep Thazhmon of Jeeves
   
• Corporate Investor Discussion with Silvia Motta of Movile, Mariano Amartino of Microsoft and Aldo Alvarez of Citi Ventures
   
• Liquidity Opportunities in VC with Edouard de Montmort of VELVET and Joncarlo Mark of Upwelling Capital
   
• Real Estate, Supply Chain & Logistics with Cristobal Perdomo of Wollef and Gregorio Schneider of TC Latin America Partners

☞ View the full agenda

Registration is open to LAVCA Members, non-member private capital investors and qualified institutional investors.

☞ REGISTER NOW

Press Spotlight

LAVCA partnered with Microsoft for a press conference to discuss key findings of LAVCA’s 2022 VC & Tech Mid-Year Trends on August 31 in São Paulo. The conference provided a detailed analysis of the Venture Capital market in Brazil and Latin America - with a focus on the presence of women in the sector, as well as initiatives to foster startups founded by and with women in executive positions.

Press Pickup:
 

☞ VIEW LAVCA’s recent research & data outputs.

LAVCA Members will receive quarterly data insights for Q3 in mid October.

Deals

▸ DEBT | Xepelin, a Chilean payments and lending platform for SMEs, secured a USD140m asset-backed loan from Goldman Sachs. 

• KASZEK and Avenir Growth led a USD111m Series B in May, in the largest known Series B for a Chilean startup at the time. 
• Xepelin secured USD80m in debt from Community Investment Management in January and USD200m in credit facilities in 2021. 

▸ DEBT | Clip, a Mexican POS payments platform, secured a USD50m revolving credit facility from Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and HSBC. 

• SoftBank Latin America and Viking Global Investors led a USD250m round at a reported USD2b valuation in June 2021; General Atlantic and SoftBank invested in 2019 at a USD400m valuation. 

▸ DEBT | Finaktiva, a Colombian credit and factoring platform for early-stage startups and scaleups, secured USD25m in debt financing from Bancolombia and responsAbility. 

• ALIVE led a USD3m+ round in August 2021. 

▸ GAMING | StepStone led a USD20m Series A for Draftea, a Mexican fantasy sports league platform, with follow-on from KASZEK, Sequoia, Bullpen and Courtside Ventures, and angels Cristiano Ronaldo, Travis Kelce (Kansas City Chiefs) and Kevin Durant (Brooklyn Nets).

• Draftea raised USD4m in April 2022; KASZEK led a USD13.2m round in January.

▸ Gradient Ventures led a USD15m Series A for R2, a Mexican embedded lending platform for consumer-facing applications, with participation from FEMSA Ventures and PayU, and follow-on from General Catalyst, Magma Partners and 166 2nd, the FO of WeWork founder Adam Neuman. 

• General Catalyst led a USD5.9m seed round in February 2022. 

▸ HRTECH | Greycroft led a USD13m Series A for Astro, a US-based talent platform connecting Latin American programmers with US tech companies, with participation from Obvious Ventures. 

▸ BLOCKCHAIN | Credix, a Belgium-based decentralized finance credit marketplace for Latin American fintechs, raised a ~USD12m Series A with participation from Motive Partners and follow-on from ParaFi Capital.

• Credix raised a USD2.5m seed round led by DRW Cumberland and ParaFi Capital in January 2021.

▸ CLEANTECH | monashees and Construct Capital led a USD8.5m round for Leoparda Electric, a Brazil-based rechargeable battery network for electric motorbikes, with participation from Claure Capital, Auteco, K50 Ventures and Climate Capital. 

▸ PROPTECH | Naya Homes, a Mexican short-term and vacation rental platform, raised a USD5.6m seed round from Carao Ventures, Clocktower Technology Ventures, Flybridge Capital Partners, Primary Venture Partners, K50 Ventures and Derive Ventures. 

▸ Syntage, an API-based financial data aggregator platform, raised a USD4.3m round from NAZCA, Costanoa Ventures, QED Investors, Rally Cap Ventures, Latitud and Norte Ventures.

▸ BIOTECH | At One Ventures and Builders VC led a USD3.7m seed round for Puna Bio, an Argentine biotech that cultivates beneficial microbes for soil enrichment, with participation from SP Ventures and Air Capital, and follow-on from IndieBio, Glocal and Grid Exponential. 

▸ Tiger Global led a USD3m seed round for Rebill, an Argentine automated payments collection platform for corporates, with participation from YC, Soma Capital and SV Angels, and angels Arash Ferdowsi (Dropbox) and Guillermo Rauch (Vercel). 

• Rebill raised a USD600k pre-seed round previously.

▸ The sovereign wealth fund of Brazilian state Espirito Santo invested ~USD1.6m in WDental, a Brazilian dental insurance platform, and ~USD2.2m in Aevo, a Brazilian corporate innovation management platform. 

• Espirito Santo’s sovereign wealth fund was structured to invest ~USD200m in government-collected capital from oil royalties into diversified sectors and asset classes in Brazil.

▸ WOMEN LED | Soma Capital led a USD1.5m round for Alima, a Mexican produce procurement platform, with participation from The Dorm Room Fund, Seed9 and Pareto.

• Alima was co-founded by Blanca Espinosa.

▸ CLEANTECH | Flori Ventures and others invested USD1.3m in Unergy, a Colombian crowdsourcing platform for clean energy projects, with participation from angel Alexander Blatter (MCR-e). 

▸ Menta, an Argentine white label platform for payments collections, raised a USD1.2 seed round from Lightspeed, Norte Ventures, MatterScale Ventures and PearVC. 

▸ HEALTECH | Impacta VC invested USD1.1m in Cuentame, a Mexican mental health platform for employees. 

▸ Enfinti, a Colombian lending platform for SMEs, raised a USD1m round from Colombian construction company Inversiones Andamas and Acelera Latam, and angels Ernesto Ruiz (Blumer), Franco Niebles (Cobru).

▸ CROSSBORDER | Spanish VC Axon invested in Uptime Analytics, a Colombian energy monitoring platform for industrial facilities. 

▸ PROPTECH | SC Ventures and H32 Capital invested in Owny, a Chilean real estate investing platform focused on the US market. 

▸ HEALTHECH | Mitfokus, a Brazilian fiscal and accounting platform for healthcare institutions, raised an undisclosed round from BossaNova Investimentos and others.

• Mitfokus was incubated at Eretz.bio, the innovation arm of Albert Einstein Hospital.

Funds 

▸ BNDES made a ~USD25m commitment to FIP Vox TFGG, Vox Capital’s Tech For Good Growth fund. 

• Vox Capital has been actively investing in healthtech startups including Omens, ISA LAB, Sanar and Intuitive Care.

▸ Rio de Janeiro launched a ~USD50m sovereign wealth fund to invest in early stage startups. 

• The fund will be managed by Trivella Investimentos.
• Inaugural investments include WDental and Aevo.

▸ CaptAll Ventures, the CVC arm of Brazilian marketing and communications company Mene & Portella, acquired a minority stake in BossaNova Investimentos.

Startup M&A

▸ Argentine fintech Ualá acquired Ceibo Créditos, an Argentine POS BNPL platform.

• Ualá launched operations in Colombia earlier this year, and raised a USD350m Series D led by SoftBank and Tencent in August 2021.

▸ iugu, a Brazilian finance automation and payment platform for SMEs, acquired the brand equity and client portfolio of Juno, Brazilian digital payments and invoicing platform.

• Iugu raised a USD120m Series A led by Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking in September 2020.

▸ Brazilian logistics startup Frete.com acquired Rotas Brasil, a Brazilian toll road expense platform. 

• Frete.com launched a ~UD60m buyout vehicle in July. 

▸ Semantix, a Brazilian provider of big data solutions, acquired Zetta, a Brazilian health insurance platform for corporates.

• Semantix merged with Alpha Capital, a SPAC led by Rafael Steinhauser formerly of Qualcomm Latin America and Alex Oxenrod of Argentine software company letgo, at a reported USD1b valuation in May 2020.

News

▸ EV | Mexican president Lopez Obrador announced plans to open lithium exploration ventures mainly catered towards electric vehicle manufacturing to private investors: “Public funding alone would not be enough.”

▸ Shopee, one of Southeast Asia’s largest e-commerce platforms, closed operations in Argentina. Chile, Mexico and Colombia are next. 

• Shopee has not announced changes to its operations in Brazil, where it became the most downloaded shopping app in 2021. 

▸ Digital banking platform Western Union announced the launch of a digital wallet in Brazil to enable international transfers. 

• The digital wallet was launched in Europe earlier this year. 
• Western Union partnered with Mercado Libre in July to enable digital remittance transfers from the US to Mexico - where 70% of remittances are still collected in cash.

▸ Binance partnered with Inswitch, a Miami-based embedded finance platform, to launch BinancePay for merchants in Latin America, and appointed Adalberto Palma, former president of the Mexican Securities and Banking Commission (CNBV), to its global advisory board.

• Binance just partnered with Mastercard to launch a prepaid crypto card in Argentina. 

▸ The Federal Reserve will reportedly base its instant payment platform on Brazil’s PIX. FedNow is expected to launch in 2023. 

• Governments of Colombia and Canada have also expressed interest in replicating the technology, per Roberto Campos Neto of Banco Central do Brasil. 

▸ Rest of World reviews how women are making use of Facebook groups and WhatsApp in response to Mexico’s problems with femicide and forced disappearances in “Our main demand is not to get killed”: Mexican women find safety in location-tracking Facebook groups.

Investors

▸ Agustin Rotondo of Wayra shares his view on the renewed approach to sustained growth in Latin American startups.

“Estamos viendo startups que despiden gente, pero que no es una señal de que les está yendo mal, es un signo de que cambió el contexto. Y antes estaban dimensionados con equipos para comerse el mundo en un año, porque era lo que les pedía el inversor; y ahora se dan cuenta que como el acceso al capital cambió, tienen que bajar un poco su línea de gastos, apuntar bien; en vez de crecer en 10 mercados, hacerlo en dos o tres. Hay como una racionalización del mercado de venture capital, y estábamos viviendo un hype que era poco defendible.” - Agustin Rotondo

▸ Rocio Wu of F-Prime Capital shares her view on the fintech opportunity driven by payment market fragmentation in Latin America.

• F-Prime recent investments in Latin America include Mozper (fintech), Guros (insurtech) and Parrot Software (enterprise software).

▸ SoftBank launched Revo, a marketing and customer acquisition consultancy exclusively dedicated to its portfolio in Latin America. 

▸ WOMEN LED |  Revo will be operated independently by Stella Guillaumon, former Director of Growth at Microsoft, and Cintia Gonçalves, founder of Wiz&Watcher.

People & Programs

▸ Congrats to the 15 Latin American startups selected to participate in YC’s S22 batch: Ping, Kashin, MovingLake, Momentu, Drip, Hero, Plutto, Ruffo, Sytex, Pulppo, Apprecio, Rio, trebu, Kapstar and Weltio.

▸ Atlantico will launch the 2022 Latin America Digital Transformation Report on September 20. Registration for the virtual launch is now open. 

• Managing Partner Julio Vasconcellos will share additional key findings during LAVCA Week 2022 alongside LAVCA Director of Research Emanuel Hernandez.

▸ Microsoft for Startups launched its Social Entrepreneurship Program in Argentina focused on early stage impact startups targeting a defined social or environmental challenge aligned with the UN’s sustainable development goals. 

Mariano Amartino of Microsoft for Startups: “Estos emprendedores se encuentran en general con un par de problemas. El primero es tratar de demostrarle al ecosistema la capacidad de generar negocios que tienen, que no son simplemente emprendedores de impacto, sino que se puede generar un negocio con impacto social. El otro problema es cómo pueden crecer su negocio integrándose en la cadena económica general que cualquier emprendedor tiene que tener para lograr ingresos genuinos. Porque no podés vivir constantemente de fondos de inversión sino que a largo plazo tenés que lograr ingresos genuinos.” 

▸ Latitud will host Vamos LatAm Summit, a founder-focused event for founders, investors and ecosystem builders in São Paulo on September 21. Registration is still open. 

▸ Google for Startups Latin America opened a new call to participate in Startups Academy for Women Founders, an equity-free program to support early stage women-led startups. Interested candidates are welcome to apply before September 23.

▸ Grupo Bimbo, a Mexican manufacturer and distributor of baked goods, launched  Bimbo Open Door, an accelerator program focused on tech-enabled bakery and snack manufacturers.

Global Tech

▸ SIGN UP for the Global Tech Brief. Edited by LAVCA Senior Advisor Julie Ruvolo, this bi-weekly newsletter covers tech activity in Asia, Latin America, Africa, CEE and the Middle East.

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