Ep. 43: Crypto steals the spotlight with Bitso and YoCripto

Welcome to Miranda Scenius: Your weekly newsletter on technology, innovation, and startups in Mexico.

Forget about the funding news, Startups are focused on building and expanding to new horizon (read Mexico).

This week round up is dominated by web3/crypto-focused startups making the headlines. Felipe Vallejo, from Bitso, was selected as the new president of Fintech México Association and YoCripto launched a new credit card for young adults.

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Startups News

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Spin was authorized as an electronic payment method

Convenience store chain Oxxo's digital wallet, Spin, obtained authorization from Mexico's financial authorities to operate as an electronic funds payments institution (IFPE). Spin offers a debit card for physical and digital payments, transfers, and bill payments, allowing Oxxo to reduce the amount of cash it handles. The electronic wallet has already been tested and scaled up to more than 20,000 Oxxo stores throughout the country, with over four million registered users. Oxxo's parent company is FEMSA. Sounds familiar? A few weeks ago they acquired the SME payment aggregator NetPay.

Felipe Vallejo, from Bitso, has been selected as the new president of Fintech México

Fintech México is an association with over 180 members from the Financial Technology Institutions (ITF), Popular Financial Companies (Sofipos), and Multiple Object Financial Companies (Sofomes) sectors, among others. After several months of operating without a president, Vallejo will push for the regulation of digital assets, open finance, and updating specific aspects of the Fintech Law during his presidency. Additionally, he wants to support projects such as the DiMo initiative of the Bank of Mexico to improve the payment system in Mexico.

YoCripto launches a new credit card in Mexico for young adults

Digital platform YoCripto has launched a new credit card designed specifically for young adults aged between 25 and 40 years old. The card offers a line of credit accessible to a wide segment of the population through a system based on guarantees that ensures a credit limit. This innovative credit card, issued in Mexican pesos, will allow those users who do not have a credit history to start building it from scratch. The credit card offers up to 3% Bitcoin Rewards with every purchase and will have a 100% acceptance rate for all applicants.

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Rest of the World

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Colombian Seeri expand to Mexico

The startup is aiming to digitalize the supply chain of SMBs in the country with their B2B marketplace that connects small businesses with brands and provides added services such as logistics, invoicing, data management, and financing. Seeri has already worked with more than 400 brands, created a catalog of around 7,000 references, and shipped 115,000 products to over 300 points in Latin America in 2022, with a total revenue of $5.5 million. Seeri's arrival in the Mexican marketplaces’ ecosystem could represent a greater participation rate in the sector, which is dominated by giants like Mercado Libre and Amazon, both with high penetration rates.

Brazilian Blip comes to Mexico

The AI-based chatbot startup is coming to Mexico, with the expectation of having over 80 clients in the country by the end of the year. The SaaS startup allows clients to automate their communications through Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Google, among other platforms. The team conducted a study that found that Mexico was ideal for its regional expansion, where it is expected that WhatsApp will be used by more than 80% of the Mexican population with smartphones by 2028. The company received a R$70 million investment in the second half of 2022, and ended the year with over R$650 million in annual recurring revenue.

Peruvian Cursalab lands in Mexico

The HRTech startup has developed a platform to address the learning needs of workers in retail and field service industries. Traditional training and talent development platforms tend to focus on administrative staff, with 80% of learning for field workers taking place on the job, making it harder to access training content and measure results. The company has just expanded to Mexico, where demand for digital HR is strong, and it plans to double its business volume and user count by the end of 2023.

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Community

Every week we share what we have been reading or listening:

• Jüsto CEO, Ricardo Weder, interview on its Business Angel activity.

• Itau BBA’s and Sling Hub’s monthly report on LatAm’s tech ecosystem.

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Nebojsa Kovacevic was born in Paris to a Serbian family. He moved to Mexico City has since lived here for 18 years. After so many years, he is proud that he has all three cultures running through his veins. He’s the founder of one of Mexico's oldest startups as he usually jokes - Kiban. And is also an advocate for bootstrapping. He’s also a self taught entrepreneur.

What would you have liked to know before starting your company?

In B2B, every customer (company) has unique needs. If you try to develop solutions to fulfill every need,  you will, unfortunately, lose a huge amount of time. You have to learn to say no to a lot of requests in order to keep your roadmap alive. But, and this is the most important part I guess, you have to efficiently communicate to your customer why you are saying no and how you are still able to help them. That's why, when we thought of our rebuild, we wanted to give our customers tools to build whatever they need from our existing solutions. On an internal note, as long as operation and processes are concerned, don't try to reinvent the wheel, don't think you're unique. There are a lot of methods and universal business rules that you can start to use immediately and that will save you time and money. You can customize everything later.

What outsiders often fail to understand about your company?

That Kiban is not only a company aiming to grow. We are also creating a company where we want to work: we have the best work environment possible. My idea was to create a company that I would feel absolutely comfortable working in for the rest of my life and to give the same to all our collaborators. With that in mind, for years we have been insisting that everyone respect their work schedule (avoid staying extra hours). We're fully remote, we offer 20 days of paid vacations in Mexico for new collaborators that they can start using from day 1, and it can go up to 32 days with seniority. We don't outsource so all of our collaborators receive PTU and contributions to their retirement fund with their real salary, we offer medical insurance and grocery vouchers and they have the day off on their birthday.

What's one thing you can keep talking about for hours?

I'm absolutely passionate about food from high-end gastronomy to street food. I love to cook. When I plan my travels, the third step after the plane/bus/train ticket and the accommodation is listing all the places I want to eat at. Apart from being a "gran tragon" I feel it's one of the few true universal topics that you can discuss with absolutely anyone. An excellent icebreaker.

What’s the weirdest job you’ve ever had to do?

CEO of Kiban no doubt. Everybody is looking up to you for answers, solutions, vision, strategy, and more. When you're the CEO of a startup, you're in a very weird position. You have to adapt, to listen to everyone: your collaborators, your customers, and the market. You have to make important decisions rapidly and reconsider those decisions quickly when you sense you're headed in the wrong direction. And that's just a regular Monday.

What makes you bullish on the Mexican startup ecosystem?

The gap between huge companies using a ton of advanced technology and micro, small, and medium businesses that are starting to discover how technology can be used and how they can benefit from it is huge. This space is filled with startups seizing opportunities. It's just the beginning. I find the way the Mexican market and entrepreneurs constantly adapt extraordinary.

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See you for the next edition. Have a question or any feedback? Just hit reply. We'd love to chat!