Bloomberg Línea — Welcome to this week’s rounds. Investing in Latin American startups has not gone out of style. This week fashion retailer H&M decided to invest in a Latin American startup, Chile’s Vestuá, a secondhand clothing marketplace. Although the amount was not disclosed, it was reported that it was a significant investment that disbursed from its corporate venture capital H&M CO:LAB.
And tennis player Serena Williams said she is interested in investing in Brazilian startups as part of the US$111 million fund she has available in her Serena Ventures fund, which she set up five years ago. She has already backed 13 unicorns.
Despite the crisis and the caution of venture capitalists, investment continues to flow into the region. CleverTap, a brand retention cloud startup, is an India-based company that has raised a Series D round of $105 million. The total includes $75 million from global investment group CDPQ, plus participation from IIFL AMC’s Tech Fund and investors Tiger Global and Sequoia India.
Now based in Mountain View, California, CleverTap has offices in São Paulo, Bombay, Singapore, Sofia, Bogotá, Amsterdam, Jakarta, and Dubai.
And this week, in addition to the proptech DD360 that received $91 million and the fintech Kontempo that raised $30 million, these are the startups that raised funding in LatAm:
Klavi
Klavi, the Brazilian SaaS platform dedicated to open banking, data aggregation, analytics and API services received new funding of $15 million. The Series A round was led by private equity funds Iporanga Ventures and Parallax Ventures, with participation from GSR Ventures.
Banking infrastructure provider CIP S.A. and Vivo Ventures, Vivo’s Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) launched in April, also entered the round, marking their first investment in a fintech. The financing also supports an additional closing within a maximum of 90 days and will feature the entry of other already committed investors.
Klavi will use the funds to strengthen its technology area, through innovation opportunities in B2B services and its data processing sector, in addition to facilitating new product development. The fintech is also aggregating information from various sources with CIP S.A. and developing the first score with ticket data.
“We are building the future of the financial system through Open Finance. The funding will give us strength to develop more solutions by facilitating the exchange of financial data. Our partners will be able to have a 360° view of their customers’ information, with everything centralized in one place, always with the users’ consent, and which can be shared with any company,” said Bruno Chan, CEO of Klavi, in a statement.
Reversso
Reversso, a Chilean e-commerce returns and exchange software startup raised its seed round for $1.1 million from investors such as Genesis, which is leading the round, Hero Capital and angel investors Matt Brown and Alan Weschler.
Reversso is a SaaS that integrates e-commerce platforms, reverse logistics and payment methods so that the process is self-service and automated. It currently has coverage in six countries: Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Colombia and Mexico.
“We quickly realized the scalability and the good reception that our product had in Latin America because we are solving a big problem,” explains Benjamin Santa Maria, CEO of the startup, in an interview with Bloomberg Línea. He founded the company in 2020 along with his brother Clemente Santa Maria and Benjamin Regonesi. And that was the reason why they decided to raise their first round of capital.
With the round they just closed, the focus is on two things, says Santa María: scaling now from Mexico (a country where it is growing at a rate of 45% per month) and secondly on creating new products that continue to improve the user experience. “Today, the product we are focusing on is our return risk scoring algorithm.”
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