Ep. 18: Mexico City newest Investment Club; Retrypay and Around Seed round, Vivanta Pre-Seed round; Fondeadora going after SMBs.
Welcome to Scenius Mexico: Your weekly newsletter on technology, innovation, and startups in Mexico.
A Mexican Plaid for HealthTech and Airbnb for office spaces have both closed new funding rounds this week. Startups like to make their business model simple to understand for everyday people - and VCs - by making a comparison with other famous companies.
It feels good to see early-stage companies in Mexico still getting funded. It shows the trust that local and international funds have in the country and its founders. Not sure how valuations are looking though.
Speaking about investors, Mexico City has a new investment club: Colectivo Jaguara. Composed of Mexican entrepreneurs, operators, investors, and start-up executives, we can assume that they will be more empathetic with founders and give them the support needed for the hard times ahead.
Funding Rounds
API-First Startup Vivanta raises a US$300k Pre-Seed Round
Usually related to Open Banking - think Plaid in the US - APIs can be applied to a wide range of sectors. The team behind Vivanta decided to develop a solution for the healthcare sector giving its end users a global view of their well-being, and allowing them to take the right steps to stay healthy.
The co-founders worked at Belvo and Arcus, two API-first FinTechs, where they came up with the idea to adapt their technical knowledge to an underserved market.
The startup is still at a very early stage, and a private version of the product will be launched in July to a select group of customers.
Sector: HealthTech
Total Raised: US$0.3 million
Founders: Alex Hernandez, Abner Colli Sanchez, Luis Esteban Ruela, Jorge Madrigal
Investors: 99 Startups, Redwood Ventures, Lotux VC, Angel Hub
PropTech Around raises a USD$3.8 million Seed Round
The Startup calls itself the Airbnb of office spaces. The idea is to take advantage of unused buildings to turn them into fully equipped shared offices for small to medium teams and big corporations adopting the hybrid work model.
Their value proposition lies in the flexibility of the business model. For a monthly subscription fee, tenants can grow their team without being constrained by a fixed long-term contract.
The founding team have been experiencing the problem first hand while working together for the past 4 years, consulting for Startups on their growth and business development. They found a gap in the growth life cycle of Startups where they are too big for co-working but not financially stable enough to get a one-year lease contract and buy their own furniture.
The funds raised will be used to test their offer in new cities in Mexico and open new countries in Latin America - starting with Brazil.
Sector: PropTech
Total Raised: US$3.8 million
Founders: Martin Haiek, Gerardo Vallarta, Alfonso Tinoco
Investors: Leap Global Partners, Latitud Ventures, Ganas Ventures, Gaingels, Unpopular Ventures, August Hill, Andreessen Horowitz
Retrypay closes a US$1.5 million Seed Round with Mucker Capital
Founded in 2020, Retrypay is developing a solution bringing together multiple payment processors and alternative payment methods allowing any e-commerce to optimize their rates of payment acceptances while decreasing card rejections.
The team plans on using the funds to grow to 12 countries of Latin America while strengthening their product for e-commerce and digital wallets.
Sector: FinTech - Payments
Total Raised: US$2.1 million
Founders: Mauricio Madrigal, Alex Galindo, Javier Flores
Investors: Mucker Capital, Kamay Ventures, Manolo Fernandez (BA)
Startup News
FinTech Fondeadora is steppin’ on Clara’s toes
The Mexican challenger bank recently announced its new banking solution to SMBs in addition to its legacy offer for retail customers. The SMBs segment can be a complex one to tackle with many complementary products and solutions.
The finTech decided to start with unlimited business credit cards for a company’s employees and a simple spend-management system. They will soon start offering revolving credit lines also per their website information.
Last year Fondeadora acquired a bank charter and raised a US$28 million funding round, giving the team the money needed to fuel their growth.
VC - Accelerators - M&A News
Meet Colectivo Jaguara: Mexico City newest investment club
This club of entrepreneurs, operators, investors, start-up and unicorn executives are joining forces to invest and add value as a collective to the startups they back.
Their investment thesis is:
Pre-Seed/Seed investments primarily in Latam
Sector-agnostic but tech-enabled
Looking for outstanding highly-driven founders
Ticket size from US$10K to US$50K
Founders interested in pitching their idea to the club contact them on their website.