China-Latin America Innovation Year: Vibrant Mexico

Category : Latin America Startups and Investing
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One of the most exciting parts of the Kr-Magma Partners platform is showcasing the growing business opportunities in Latin America for Chinese entrepreneurs and investors. As part of our partnership with Kr Space, we created the China-Latin America Innovation Year and will be putting on an event each month to highlight the unique opportunities in different Latin American countries.

Dong Bo, Kr Space’s Vice President, debuted our joint 2018 China-Latin America Innovation Year plan: Kr-Magma Space will host 10 monthly Latin American country themed workshops and will rotate between Beijing and Shanghai. Over the next year, we’ll showcase Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Argentina, Peru, Uruguay, Panama, and Puerto Rico to helping more Chinese entrepreneurs to understand Latin-American market and how to do business in each country. At the same time, the events will help more Latin American entrepreneurs to understand and leverage China, whether in their home countries or in China, with the ultimate goal of building a cross-border innovation, entrepreneurship and financing ecosystem. (more…)

20 Interesting Startups in Latin America

Category : Latin America Startups and Investing
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Fastest-Growing Startups in Latin America

Many of Latin America’s most successful tech startups have already made a name for themselves internationally. Companies like MercadoLibre and Despegar have become household names across Latin America and are being recognized across Asia, Europe, and North America as stable brands that are competing on a global scale. Some of the most successful and established startups in Latin America that most of us already know include in no particular order:

  1. Despegar (Argentina)

Founded in 1999, Despegar is Latin America’s answer to Expedia: an online marketplace for flights, hotels, rental cars, vacation packages, and cruises. Currently, Despegar is the fifth-largest online travel agent in the world and raised more than US$332M in its IPO this year. The company has a market cap of US$1.85B.

  1. Globant (Argentina)

Globant was founded in 2003 as a software company that helps major US and UK companies improve customer journeys through innovative technology. Since its IPO in 2014, Globant has seen its share prices quadruple with a market cap of US$1.53B.

  1. MercadoLibre (Argentina)

MercadoLibre is one of Latin America’s best-known startups and operates across the region as an online marketplace for goods, much like Amazon or Alibaba. Currently, the company has a market cap of US$14.08B.

  1. Movile (Brazil)

Movile is the market leader in all things mobile. With more than $100M in revenue and 120M users, Movile is one of the regions biggest tech companies, getting investment from Naspers. They’re also one of the most active investors in startups in the region.

  1. OpenEnglish (Venezuela)

OpenEnglish is the leading edtech company teaching English to the Latin American and U.S. Hispanic markets. Founded in Venezuela in 2006, OpenEnglish offers live classes at all hours and has enrolled over 500,000 students in 40 countries.

  1. OLX (Argentina)

Inspired by Craigslist, OLX is an online consumer-to-consumer exchange platform that is used overwhelmingly in emerging rather than developed markets. It was mostly acquired by Naspers in 2010 and is considered one of the largest Internet brands to be completely developed outside of Silicon Valley.

  1. PedidosYa (Uruguay)

Latin America’s answer to UberEats or GrubHub is PedidosYa, an online food ordering and delivery platform founded in 2009 in Montevideo, Uruguay. German delivery company, Delivery Hero acquired PedidosYa in 2014 but kept the name.

  1. Netshoes (Brazil)

Netshoes is a Brazilian e-commerce conglomerate that acts as the official distributor for several major sporting goods brands in Latin America. Netshoes was founded in 2000 and recently made US$148.5M in this year’s IPO with a market cap of US$251.4M.

  1. Yellow Pepper (Mexico)

Yellow Pepper was Latin America’s first mobile banking company and recently launched an innovative mobile wallet for Latin Americans called Yepex. Yellow Pepper operates in Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia and is the first fintech company to receive a World Bank grant to advance their technology.

  1. InvertirOnline (Argentina)

IntervirOnline is an online stocks trading company, like Etrade or Charles Schwab, for the Latin American market.

Honorable mention to Rappi, Cornershop, Mercadoni, Glovo who are battling it out for last mile delivery and have raised a total of $300M+ in the last 18 months.

Up-and-Coming Startups in Latin America

With Latin America’s startup ecosystem booming, it comes as no surprise that each year brings more promising startups. While Argentina and Brazil are still leaders in tech entrepreneurship, Mexico and Chile are also producing a number of standout stars that are making waves across the region.

Here are ten up-and-coming startups from Latin America that you need to know about right now, again in no particular order:

  1. Wizeline (Mexico)

Wizeline is a software platform that helps developers and companies built technology faster. Based in San Francisco and Guadalajara, founder Bismarck Lepe is showing how technology companies can straddle both the US, Latin American and Asian markets.

  1. CargoX (Brazil)

CargoX is the Uber for trucks in Brazil. After quitting his finance job in London, Federico Vega and team has built CargoX into $200M in annual revenue, securing investment from Goldman Sachs and other top venture capitalists and investment banks.

  1. Satellogic (Argentina)

Satellogic is a space tech company founded in 2010 to democratize access to satellite data helping us tackle global challenges more quickly. In 2017, they raised US$27M from Chinese Internet company Tencent and CrunchFund and launched their sixth micro-satellite into orbit.

  1. ArchDaily (Chile)

Archdaily is an online platform covering architecture news, events, interviews, products, and competitions – catered to architecture professionals. They are the largest architecture website in the world in English, Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese.

  1. Psafe (Brazil)

Psafe develops apps that maximize mobile security, privacy, and performance. With over 100 million installations and 20 million monthly users, Psafe is the largest cloud-based mobile security platform in the Americas. In 2013, Psafe raised a US$30M Series C Round from Qihoo 360, Redpoint e.ventures, and Pinnacle Ventures.

  1. Nubank (Brazil)

Nubank is the leading digital financial services company in Brazil, providing online banking solutions for Brazilians through a “no-fee” credit card that is managed through a mobile app. Nubank raised a US$80M Series D round led by DST Global in 2016 and recently opened an office in Berlin, Germany and then joined the unicorn club with another large round of investment in 2018.

  1. 99 (Brazil)

99 is Brazil’s second popular rideshare platform that operates much like Uber or Lyft. In January of this year, China’s platform Didi Chuxing acquired 99 for a reported $1B.

Etermax (Argentina)

Etermax is a mobile game development company that created the viral game Trivia Crack. Etermax is considered a pioneer in the Argentine mobile game industry, bringing attention to tech entrepreneurship in South America through addictive games like Trivia Crack. Trivia Crack itself caught on first in Latin America, then went viral in the US with 65 million total downloads – 50,000 a day in the US at its peak.

OmniBnk(Colombia/Chile)

OmniBnk, formerly Portal Finance, is a Colombian/Chilean fintech platform that helps companies with invoice backed financing. Omnibnk works with large financial institutions and small businesses to help them finance their working capital needs.

While many of Latin America’s top startups are still coming from traditional hubs like Argentina and Brazil, countries across the region are producing exciting, innovative companies that are gaining global attention. This is not a fully inclusive list and there are many many more companies that deserve to be highlighted. Who else would you put on this list?

Overview of Fintech in Latin America: Startups, Funding and Opportunities

Category : Latin America Startups and Investing, Technology
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Only 11% of Latin Americans have access to credit from formal institutions. In fact, in Chile, 37% of adults have no accounts with a formal financial provider, even though Chile has one of the highest levels of financial inclusion in the region.

In comparison, under 40% of adults in Colombia, Mexico, and Peru have formal bank accounts. However, in one of the most chronically underbanked parts of the world, improvements in financial technology have opened the doors for widespread financial inclusion throughout the Latin America.

More and more people are accessing mobile payments, credit systems, and P2P lending opportunities through recent advances in local fintech, and investors are catching wind of the enormous opportunity.

While there have been considerable advances in financial technology in Latin America in the past five years, many tools are still only available in the countries where they were founded. A report by Oliver Wyman, released in September 2016, provides a snapshot of local fintech players in Chile, Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia.

Source

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8 Tips From Latin American Startup Investors

Category : Latin America Startups and Investing
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As an VC investing in both the US and Latin America, I get to see how investors look at the world differently around the world. I gathered the top advice from Latin American venture capitalists on starting a company, fundraising, and how to keep moving forward that can be applied anywhere in the world.

Move faster and believe in yourself

“Move forward and do it faster than others.” – Rocio Fonseca, Executive Director, Start-Up Chile, Chile

Fonseca started and sold a microbiology company in Chile before running Start-Up Chile, the Chilean Government back incubator. Fonseca stresses that women especially need to trust in themselves when moving forward with their businesses. She thinks that if women are given access to education, coaching, and other female role models, countries can change their viewpoint on women’s empowerment.

Focus is Crucial

“It’s impossible to do everything at one time.“ – Sebastian Vidal, Executive Director, Parallel 18, Puerto Rico

Vidal has met many founders who lack focus. They’re all over the place, trying to launch in different markets, at the same time perform R&D. They don’t realize how fast money goes unless they focus on one specific thing. If a founder is distracted from the company’s primary mission, they lose traction, and waste money, leading to failure.

Be Frank about What You Don’t Know

“It’s really about listening and observing. “ – Amanda Jacobson, Sub Director, Fiinlab, Mexico

Everyone starts out somewhere, Jacobson observes. She started out asking a lot of questions, observing, listening, and asking questions to fully herself immerse in her position at Village Capital. People love to talk about what they know, she realized, which allowed her to build great connections that served her long-term. (more…)