Welcome to rounds of the week. This week venture capital focused on the south of the American continent. Startups in countries such as Brazil, Colombia, Chile, and Argentina were among those that managed to raise seed capital.
Below is a brief presentation of the startups that achieved the confidence of regional and foreign investors as a boost to overcome the early stage.
Ribon
Ribon, a Brazilian startup that enables donations to charities via blockchain, received a post-seed round of R$20 million ($4 million), led by Valor Capital Group, followed by Bitkraft, Kenetic, Flori Ventures, and 2TM funds.
Womp
Founded by Ecuadorian Gabriela Trueba, Womp raised $4.7 million to democratize cloud-based 3D software. Major investors include the Female Founders Fund and Haystack with participation from NEO Investment Partners, along with a diverse set of angel investors, including Director Ari Aster and A24 CEO Daniel Katz. Womp is a 3D creation platform that integrates social features with design tools to create a collaborative experience.
Medismart
Chilean startup Medismart announced that it raised $6 million in investment. The financing round was led by two international investment funds linked to Chileans, Benslie International, related to a national family office, and Sunrick, whose investor is the lawyer Alberto Eguiguren Correa.
Medismart aims to enter the Mexican market with the support of Startup México, through its Soft Landing program. Its business model is based on offering monthly subscriptions to a digital health ecosystem through insurance companies in their different policies and health plans, respectively, that they offer to their clients, impacting their productivity, absenteeism, and satisfaction.
HoyTrabajas
Colombian startup HoyTrabajas announced the raising of a seed round for $3.5 million, intending to continue to help Latin Americans without professional education to access a formal job. Its founders Rubén Córdoba, Vladimir Guzmán, and Sebastián Arce had previous experience in the human resources sector, and which led them to found the highly regarded ‘LinkedIn for low-skilled profiles’.
The company had the support of Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley accelerator, as it was part of its most recent batch 2022. It also had the participation of Arash Ferdowsi, co-founding partner of Dropbox, as an angel investor.
Ola GG
The crypto startup founded by Argentines Clara Bullrich and Nicolás del Pino announced an investment round of $8 million, which will be used for the acquisition of NFTs and to generate educational content that promotes the adoption of Play-To-Earn games in Spanish-speaking communities.
The seed round included the participation of funds such as Galaxy Interactive, BITKRAFT, Arca, Com2Us, Cultur3d, Huobi Ventures, Spark Capital, Blocktower, IVC, Morningstar, Sangha Capital, Mentha, Actai Ventures, Valhalla Ventures, Polygon, Crypto.com, The Venture City, YGG SEA, IndiGG, Bitscale, and Fir Capital.
Waterplan
Another Argentine startup, founded in 2020, raised a seed round for $7 million led by Transition Global and Giant Ventures. The emerging company uses artificial intelligence to make water use more efficient, a business model that attracted activist and actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who also participated in this round, which was also joined by former basketball player Emanuel Ginobili.
The startup founded by José Ignacio Galindo, Nicolás Wertheimer, Olivia Cesi, and Matías Comercio is a SaaS platform that allows companies to continuously monitor risks related to water use.
