Ep. 32: Kuona, Aviva, and Hero Guest raise early-stage rounds, Valoreo is sold to Razor Group, and two new LatAm startups are expanding to Mexico.
Welcome to Scenius Mexico: Your weekly newsletter on technology, innovation, and startups in Mexico.
Here’s the first edition of 2023. I hope you enjoyed our Deep Dive analysis on Stori last week and are ready to tackle that new year with us.
No big changes in the funding environment, with mainly early-stage rounds being closed and a trip to the death valley of funding for later-stage startups.
Still, Mexico keeps attracting talent from all over the world and is increasingly getting the top spot in foreign startup expansion plans, with Peruvian and Ecuadorian additions this week.
Equity Funding Rounds
Kuona closes a US$6 million Seed round
This startup is using machine learning to solve challenges around pricing and promotions. They look across available promotions to show consumer packaged goods companies and retailers which ones are doing well and how to automatically optimize product prices and inventories in connection with the promotions.
Currently, Kuona operates in the United States, Mexico, Peru, Ecuador and just opened an office in Brazil, with 15 to 20 global entities as customers, such as Coca-Cola and OXXO convenience stores.
Sector: SaaS - A.I.
Total Raised: US$7.2 million
Founders: Jose Maria Sanroman de la Garza, Agustín Magaña
Investors: Cometa, Seaya Cathay Latam, FEMSA Ventures
Aviva raises a US$2.2 million Pre-Seed round
This startup is following a unique approach to unsecured credit for underserved communities. Aviva’s physical onboarding kiosks build a bridge to those living in remote communities and provide a documentless 3-minute video onboarding for everyone in need of liquidity.
The team is currently in beta with a group of 500 clients in three municipalities in the State of Mexico and intend to use the new capital to expand their video call booth network, as well as strengthen their credit origination system and launch a credit card.
Sector: FinTech - Lending
Total Raised: US$2.2 million
Founders: David Hernández, Filiberto Castro, Amran Frey
Investors: Newtopia VC, Seedstars, 500 Global, Xtraordinary Venture Partners, Wollef
Hero Guest closes a US$2.3 million pre-Series A round
This startup is a digital academy that trains front-line workers, focusing on the restaurant and hospitality industries, to reduce personnel turnover. The startup has already trained 70,000 employees.
The funding will be used to improve the development of the platform, as well as restructuring the sales and marketing team.
This financing round brought the company’s post-money valuation to US$ 8.8 million.
Sector: Hospitality - SaaS
Total Raised: US$2.3 million
Founders: Gabriel Garcia Guzman
Investors: Grupo MVS, Variv Capital, Grupo Anderson
Startup News
Santander launches its digital bank called OpenBank
This traditional Spanish bank, with operations in Mexico, is bringing its digital bank to the Mexican market too. OpenBank already has over 1.7 million users in Europe and will be an opportunity for Santander to offer more services to Mexican customers while reaching a new segment of the market.
The company is currently waiting for the green lights from the local regulator Comisión Nacional Bancaria y de Valores (CNBV) and hope to be operating by the end of the year.
VC - Accelerators - M&A News
Addem Capital partners with Brazilian Credix
This partnership seeks to foster a better cash flow pool available in Latin America with shared experience and infrastructure. It will also serve to promote their decentralized financial models with Addem Capital’s first DeFi backed loans and Credix platform based on the blockchain technology.
The two firms already worked together to finance two companies in Brazil, Tecredi and Divibank, and will make their first joint investment into the Mexican market in 2023.
German e-commerce aggregator Razor acquires Valoreo
Following a US$70 million funding round, Germany’s next generation global consumer goods conglomerate Razor Groupe decided to kick start their growth in Latin America by acquiring Valoreo. The two companies share a major common investor that pushed for the merger to happen -LCatterton.
Latin America is the fastest growing e-commerce market in the world, with strong secular consumer trends that will continue to drive long-term growth for Razor Group and build on the strong foundation Valoreo has established in Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia.
Rest of the World
Peruvian Leasein is coming for Mexico in 2023
Leasein wants to become your IT department’s best friend by managing hardware as a service. The startup’s clients can rent computers for a flat monthly fee. If there’s a hardware issue, the startup handles returns and repairs.
After finding its product-market fit in Peru, the team is now ready to expand with the Mexican market in sight.
Databits is expanding to Mexico
Founded in Ecuador by Mexican CEO Fernanda Aldrette, the up-skilling training platform in Data Science & AI for the LatAm workforce is coming back to its roots.
So far the startup has been successful in its home country and has already started to train employees from companies all around Latin America such as BBVA, Diners Club International, the ONU and AT&T with over 3500 students.
Fernando is the founder of AVIONETA. After 10 years of experience as the son of someone with an alcohol use disorder, he went from startup employee to founder to focus on a common health issue - alcoholism. Today they offer a tech-enabled, science-based monthly subscription for Latin Americans to curb their alcohol consumption or quit altogether. They are on a mission to become Latam's household brand to prevent and treat alcohol consumption problems.
What would you have liked to know before starting your company/career?
The importance of managing talent and recruitment. Also, using a sports analogy, the importance of founders knowing when to be coaches and when to be players, and the different hard & soft skills required for those two roles. I'd venture to say that most founders' mistake is to play more and coach less than they should.
What do outsiders often fail to understand about your company/project?
Misconception that addiction (we don't love that word; we're introducing new terms) must be a non-profit / governmental endeavor, and can't be a private sector mission-driven social enterprise.
What's one thing you can keep talking about for hours?
As cliché as my answer sounds, all things related to Venture building.
What’s the weirdest job you’ve ever had to do?
Hmmm, weird in a fun kind of way: a cousin and I as teenagers would horseback ride for hours, hectare after hectare, along with adult ranchers, to herd cattle to specific zones in my grandfather's ranch and get them ready for the county fair! You wouldn't expect that from this "florecita de banqueta" (boring city guy)!
What makes you bullish on the Mexican startup ecosystem?
Necessity is the mother of invention. Lot's of that in Mexico and Latam. In Mexico we have some monumental, real problems to solve: health, financial inclusion, inequality gap. The less known part of Icarus's tale is his father's 2nd piece of advice: don't fly too low, or the ocean foam will unthread your wings. That translates to a parting piece of advice: let's not be conformist. Let's change ourselves, our families, our communities, our nation, our continent...our world.
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