Montevideo — Sergio Fogel, co-founder dLocal (DLO), Uruguay’s first unicorn, is not resting on his laurels, and is already attracting the attention of global investors with his new fintech startup, Datanomik.
Datanomik, which offers open banking solutions, closed its first $6 million seed round this week, with the participation of Nazca (Mexico), Canary (Brazil) and Andreessen Horowitz (United States).
The venture was conceived in partnership with Gonzalo Strauss, who is the CEO and, who, according to El País, had previously held that role at Astropay, another company co-founded by Fogel.
Datanomik was created to facilitate and simplify access to different bank accounts of companies in various countries from a single API.
“This way, CFOs can connect all their financial accounts and get a centralized view to manage their company’s performance, while performing real-time conciliations, bookkeeping, accounting and any other business operation,” Strauss told El País.
“In December last year, they showed me a product that they had made for Astropay’s internal operations because they saw the potential for it to become a company,” Fogel said. “Gonzalo [Strauss] gave me a demonstration, and when I saw it, it blew my mind.”
“I told him that the Andreessen Horovitz investment fund should see it to validate the idea,” Fogel added. “We organized a call in December, and they immediately wanted to participate and invest. They asked for other investors to add value, and so Nazca from Mexico, Canary from Brazil and a number of angel investors came aboard. In the end, the round exceeded expectations, and we had to close it because offers to invest kept coming in.”
Now the fledgling company plans to expand to the rest of the region as its first focus, and is aiming for Brazil first, followed by Mexico and Colombia, all during this year
Datanomik currently has 20 employees in Uruguay, Argentina, Colombia and Mexico, and estimates that it will close 2022 with 40 staff.
Among its current clients is Receita Federal, Brazil’s tax authority.
As for monetization, the company operates according to the freemium model, which implies that they start charging from a certain number of API calls and the type of information required.