Ep. 12 - SoftBank goes Early-Stage; Zubale massive Serie A; Road to Innovate Finale; and more.
Welcome to Scenius Mexico: Your weekly newsletter on technology, innovation, and startups in Mexico.
This week, SoftBank is doubling down on Mexico and the LatAm region with a new fund dedicated to early-stage companies, and Tofino Capital wants to explore frontier markets.
Zubale exponential growth opens the doors to a massive Serie A to expand into new markets and play with financial products.
And 5 impact-driven Mexican entrepreneurs are heading to Guatemala to compete in Road to Innovate 2022’s final.
Funding Rounds
Zubale raises a US$40 million Serie A to grow its presence in LatAm and launch a financial product
Zubale is a gig collaborators marketplace providing retailers with independent workers to fulfill orders; kind of a white-label Instacart for Latin America.
The Startup currently operates in Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Peru and plans to use this new investment to expand into Brazil and Chile while exploring offering embedded finance products and services.
Zubale has tens of thousands of gig workers using its marketplace and is experiencing growth of 25% month over month for the past two years, hence this massive Serie A to support their trajectory.
The e-commerce market in Latin America has been gaining traction over the past two years and is poised to double in size and be valued at more than $100 billion by 2025.
Sector: E-commerce - Marketplace
Total Raised: US$48 million
Founders: Allison Campbell, Sebastián Monroy
Investors: QED Investors, GFC, Felicis Ventures, GGV Capital, NFX, Accel, Wollef, and Maya Capital
PropTech Kambio raises a US$1.2 million Seed round to launch operations
The Startup focuses on building and designing high-quality homes in a short period of time. The idea behind it is to make the process fully online, configurable, and adaptable to every budget.
While their product is still on waiting list, the co-founders have aligned a long list of venture capitalists and business angels, including WeWork co-founder Miguel McKelvey, and one of Colombia's biggest construction firms, ConConcreto.
Sector: PropTech
Total Raised: US$1.2 million
Founders: Gilberto Gutiérrez de Lara, Jerónimo Berenguer
Investors: First Check Ventures, Plug and Play Ventures, WeWork Alumni Fund, Bluebox Ventures, Assymetry Ventures, ConConcreto (CVC), Miguel McKelvey (B.A.), Jerónimo Uribe (B.A.), Tomás Uribe (B.A.)
General News
5 Mexican founders selected for Road to Innovate 2022’s final
Road to Innovate is a Startup Pitch competition launched by Friedrich Naumann NGO three years ago to foster entrepreneurship in Central America.
The competition is open to founders operating in the following areas: HealthTech, Energy, Smart Cities, and Social Impact - which are currently the industries with the least ventures in Mexico.
The final will be held in Guatemala and the winners will get access to Networking events and consulting services on legal, marketing, and fundraising matters.
Mexican finalists are:
Ardown - A platform helping children with Down syndrome to develop their cognitive process and learning capabilities.
Uzon Energy - A platform allowing citizens to report an issue in public lights to their local governments.
AgroSolar - Building solar-powered solutions with application in the agriculture, industry, and home building sectors.
QueryDr - An App for online medical consultations and medical drug ordering.
Eco Roof-Agro - Using sensors and connected platforms to monitor harvests and improve yield.
Crowdfunding platform Arkangeles get regulatory approval to operate in Mexico
Founded in 2017, the Startup waited 5 years before finally getting the green light from the regulator under the Mexican Ley FinTech.
Arkangeles' mission is to open investing in Startups to a broader public while making the process easier. They currently operate under a collective fund model where tickets are fragmented between all investors and the entry price is as low as 3,000 Mexican pesos.
Arkangeles is now the second crowdfunding platform to be approved under the Ley FinTech after Crowdlink got cleared last year.
Venture Capital - M&A News
Upload Ventures: SoftBank's new early-stage fund for LatAm
Already an important player in the region with two massive funds totaling US$8 billion dedicated to Scale-ups (Startups in the Growth phase), SoftBank is now betting on Early-stage companies.
Upload Ventures will deploy a fund of US$300 million with an initial investment of US$100 million in the first year. It will have an average ticket between US$1 million and US$10 million.
This new fund shows the confidence put by SoftBank in the region to keep growing in the future and its readiness to make riskier bets by entering early in promising Startups.
While the last three years have seen a surge in total investment, most of the funds allocated were captured by a few late-stage Startups. Investors' strategy was to edge the risks involved in investing in the region by betting on already successful companies while taking the time to understand the market better.
A move to early-stage ventures is a sign of a stronger trust in LatAm entrepreneurs to build the next unicorns and will give a chance to a broader range of Startups to shine.
Tofino Capital launches a US$10 million fund to invest in frontier markets, including Mexico
The main thesis of the fund is to target large markets with hundreds of millions of people that have minimal access to venture capital and back startups in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.
Furthermore, Tofino Capital focuses on startups in the B2B segments, particularly those with fintech, logistics, and marketplaces themes.
The team plans to invest between $50,000 and $500,000 in early-stage companies. And unlike the traditional thesis where VC firms bank on one startup in their portfolio to return the fund, Tofino Capital plans to adopt a different approach, where it “gets in early and gets out fairly early, too.”