QuintoAndar
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São Paulo’s QuintoAndar real estate platform raises $120M, now valued at $5.1B
Less than three months after announcing a $300 million Series E, Brazilian proptech QuintoAndar has raised an additional $120 million.
New investors Greenoaks Capital and China’s Tencent co-led the round, which included participation from some existing backers as well. São Paulo-based QuintoAndar is now valued at $5.1 billion, up from $4 billion at the time of its last raise in late May. With the extension, the startup has now raised more than $700 million since its 2013 inception. Ribbit Capital led the first tranche of its Series E.
QuintoAndar describes itself as an “end-to-end solution for long-term rentals” that, among other things, connects potential tenants to landlords and vice versa. Last year, it also expanded into connecting home buyers to sellers. Its long-term plan is to evolve into a one-stop real estate shop that also offers mortgage, title insurance and escrow services.
To that end, earlier this month, the startup acquired Atta Franchising, a 7-year-old São Paulo-based independent real estate mortgage broker. Specifically, acquiring Atta is designed to speed up its ability to offer mortgage services to its users. QuintoAndar also plans to explore the possibility of offering a product to perform standalone transactions outside of its marketplace in partnership with other brokers, according to CEO and co-founder Gabriel Braga.
This year, QuintoAndar expanded operations into 14 new cities in Brazil. Eventually, QuintoAndar plans to enter the Mexican market as its first expansion outside of its home country, but it has not yet set a date for that step. Today, the company has more than 120,000 rentals under management and about 10,000 new rentals per month. Its rental platform is live in 40 cities across Brazil, while its home-buying marketplace is live in four (São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte and Porto Alegre) and seeing more than 10,000 sales in annualized terms.
QuintoAndar, he said, is open to acquiring more companies that it believes can either help it accelerate in a particular way or add something it had not yet thought about.
“We’re receptive to the idea but our core strategy is to focus on organic growth and our own innovation and accelerate that,” Braga said.
Why raise more money so soon?
The Series E was oversubscribed with investors who got in and “some who could not join,” according to Braga.
Greenoaks and Tencent, he said, couldn’t participate because of “timing issues.”
“We kept talking and they came back to us after the round, and wanted to be involved so we found a way to have them on board,” Braga said. “We did not need the money. But we have been constantly overachieving on the forecast that we shared with our investors. And that’s part of the reason why we had this extension.”
Greenoaks’ long-term time horizon was appealing because the firm’s investment was designed to be “perpetual capital with no predefined time frame,” Braga said.
“We’re doing our best to build an enduring company that will be around for many, many years, so it’s good to have investors who share that vision and are technically aligned,” he added.
Greenoaks partner Neil Shah said his firm believes that what QuintoAndar is building will “fundamentally reshape real estate transactions, enhancing transparency, expanding options for Brazilians seeking housing, dramatically simplifying the experience for landlords and driving increased investment into real estate across the country.” He also believes there is big potential for the company to take its offering to other parts of Latin America.
“We look forward to being partners for decades to come,” he added.
Tencent’s experience in China is something QuintoAndar also finds valuable.
“We believe we can learn a lot from them and other Chinese companies doing interesting stuff there,” Braga said.
QuintoAndar isn’t the only Brazilian proptech firm raising big money: In March, São Paulo digital real estate platform Loft announced it had closed on $425 million in Series D funding led by New York-based D1 Capital Partners. Then, about one month later, it revealed a $100 million extension that valued the company at $2.9 billion.
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Brazilian proptech startup QuintoAndar lands $300M at a $4B valuation
Fintech and proptech are two sectors that are seeing exploding growth in Latin America, as financial services and real estate are two categories in particular dire need of innovation in a region.
Brazil’s QuintoAndar, which has developed a real estate marketplace focused on rentals and sales, has seen impressive growth in recent years. Today, the São Paulo-based proptech has announced it has closed on $300 million in a Series E round of funding that values it at an impressive $4 billion.
The round is notable for a few reasons. For one, the valuation — high by any standards but especially for a LatAm company — represents an increase of four times from when QuintoAndar raised a $250 million Series D in September 2019.
It’s also noteworthy who is backing the company. Silicon Valley-based Ribbit Capital led its Series E financing, which also included participation from SoftBank’s LatAm-focused Innovation Fund, LTS, Maverik, Alta Park, an undisclosed U.S.-based asset manager fund with over $2 trillion in AUM, Kaszek Ventures, Dragoneer and Accel partner Kevin Efrusy.
Having backed the likes of Coinbase, Robinhood and CreditKarma, Ribbit Capital has historically focused on early-stage investments in the fintech space. Its bet on QuintoAndar represents clear faith in what the company is building, as well as its confidence in the startup’s plans to branch out from its current model into a one-stop real estate shop that also offers mortgage, title, insurance and escrow services.
The latest round brings QuintoAndar’s total raised since its 2013 inception to $635 million.
Ribbit Capital Partner Nick Huber said QuintoAndar has over the years built “a unique and trusted brand in Brazil” for those looking for a place to call home.
“Whether you are looking to buy or to rent, QuintoAndar can support customers through the entire transaction process: from browsing verified inventory to signing the final contracts,” Huber told TechCrunch. “The ability to serve customers’ needs through each phase of life and to do so from start to finish is a unique capability, both in Brazil and around the world.”
QuintoAndar describes itself as an “end-to-end solution for long-term rentals” that, among other things, connects potential tenants to landlords and vice versa. Last year, it expanded also into connecting a home buyers to sellers.
Image Credits: QuintoAndar
TechCrunch spoke with co-founder and CEO Gabriel Braga and he shared details around the growth that has attracted such a bevy of high-profile investors.
Like most other businesses around the world, QuintoAndar braced itself for the worst when the COVID-19 pandemic hit last year — especially considering one core piece of its business is to guarantee rents to the landlords on its platform.
“In the beginning, we were afraid of the implications of the crisis but we were able to honor our commitments,” Braga said. “In retrospect, the pandemic was a big test for our business model and it has validated the strength and defensibility of our business on the credit side and reinforced our value proposition to tenants and landlords. So after the initial scary moments, we actually felt even more confident in the business that we are building.”
QuintoAndar describes itself as “a distant market leader” with more than 100,000 rentals under management and about 10,000 new rentals per month. Its rental platform is live in 40 cities across Brazil, while its home-buying marketplace is live in four. Part of its plans with the new capital is to expand into new markets within Brazil, as well as in Latin America as a whole.
The startup claims that, in less than a year, QuintoAndar managed to aggregate the largest inventory among digital transactional platforms. It now offers more than 60,000 properties for sale across Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belho Horizonte and Porto Alegre. To give greater context around the company’s growth of that side of its platform: In its first year of operation, QuintoAndar closed more than 1,000 transactions. It has now surpassed the mark of 8,000 transactions in annualized terms, growing between 50% and 100% quarter over quarter.
As for the rentals side of its business, Braga said QuintoAndar has more than 100,000 rentals under management and is closing about 10,000 new rentals per month. The company is not profitable as it’s focused on growth, although it’s unit economics are particularly favorable in certain markets such as Sao Paulo, which is financing some of its growth in other cities, according to Braga.
Now, the 2,000-person company is looking to begin its global expansion with plans to enter the Mexican market later this year. With that, Braga said QuintoAndar is looking to hire “top-tier” talent from all over.
“We want to invest a lot in our product and tech core,” he said. “So we’re trying to bring in more senior people from abroad, on a global basis.”
Some history
CEO Braga and CTO André Penha came up with the idea for QuintoAndar after receiving their MBAs at Stanford University. As many startups do, the company was founded out of Braga’s personal “nightmare” of an experience — in this case, of trying to rent an apartment in Sao Paulo.
The search process, he recalls, was difficult as there was not enough information available online and renters were forced to provide a guarantor, or co-signer, from the same city or pay rent insurance, which Braga described as “very expensive.”
“Overall, I felt it was a very inefficient and fragmented process with no transparency or tech,” Braga told me at the time of the company’s last raise. “There was all this friction and high cost involved, just real tangible problems to solve.”
The concept for QuintoAndar (which can be translated literally to “Fifth Floor” in Portuguese) was born.
“Little by little, we created a platform that consolidated supply and inventory in a uniform way,” Braga said.
The company took the search phase online for the first time, according to Braga. It also eliminated the need for tenants to provide a guarantor, thereby saving them money. On the other side, QuintoAndar also works to help protect the landlord with the guarantee that they will get their rent “on time every month,” Braga said.
It’s been interesting watching the company evolve and grow over time, just as it’s been fascinating seeing the region’s startup scene mature and shine in recent years.
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VTEX, an e-commerce platform used by Walmart, raises $140M led by SoftBank’s LatAm fund
E-commerce now accounts for 14% of all retail sales, and its growth has led to a rise in the fortunes of startups that build tools to enable businesses to sell online. In the latest development, a company called VTEX — which originally got its start in Latin America helping companies like Walmart expand their business to new markets with an end-to-end e-commerce service covering things like order and inventory management, front-end customer experience and customer service — has raised $140 million in funding, money it will be using to continue taking its business deeper into more international markets.
The investment is being led by SoftBank, specifically via its Latin American fund, with participation also from Gávea Investimentos and Constellation Asset Management. Previous investors include Riverwood and Naspers; Riverwood continues to be a backer, the company said.
Mariano Gomide, the CEO who co-founded VTEX with Geraldo Thomaz, said the valuation is not being disclosed, but he confirmed that the founders and founding team continue to hold more than 50% of the company. In addition to Walmart, VTEX customers include Levi’s, Sony, L’Oréal and Motorola . Annually, it processes some $2.4 billion in gross merchandise value across some 2,500 stores, growing 43% per year in the last five years.
VTEX is in that category of tech businesses that has been around for some time — it was founded in 1999 — but has largely been able to operate and grow off its own balance sheet. Before now, it had raised less than $13 million, according to PitchBook data.
This is one of the big rounds to come out of the relatively new SoftBank Innovation Fund, an effort dedicated to investing in tech companies focused on Latin America. The fund was announced earlier this year at $2 billion and has since expanded to $5 billion. Other Latin American companies that SoftBank has backed include online delivery business Rappi, lending platform Creditas and property tech startup QuintoAndar.
The common theme among many SoftBank investments is a focus on e-commerce in its many forms (whether that’s transactions for loans or to get a pizza delivered), and VTEX is positioned as a platform player that enables a lot of that to happen in the wider marketplace, providing not just the tools to build a front end, but to manage the inventory, ordering and customer relations at the back end.
“VTEX has three attributes that we believe will fuel the company’s success: a strong team culture, a best-in-class product and entrepreneurs with profitability mindset,” said Paulo Passoni, managing investment partner at SoftBank’s Latin America fund, in a statement. “Brands and retailers want reliability and the ability to test their own innovations. VTEX offers both, filling a gap in the market. With VTEX, companies get access to a proven, cloud-native platform with the flexibility to test add-ons in the same data layer.”
Although VTEX has been expanding into markets like the U.S. (where it acquired UniteU earlier this year), the company still makes some 80% of its revenues annually in Latin America, Gomide said in an interview.
There, it has been a key partner to retailers and brands interested in expanding into the region, providing integrations to localise storefronts, a platform to help brands manage customer and marketplace relations, and analytics, competing against the likes of SAP, Oracle, Adobe and Salesforce (but not, he said in answer to my question, Commercetools, which builds Shopify -style API tools for mid and large-sized enterprises and itself raised $145 million last month).
E-commerce, as we’ve pointed out, is a business of economies of scale. Case in point: While VTEX processes some $2.5 billion in transactions annually, it makes a relatively small return on that — $69 million, to be exact. This, plus the benefit of analytics on a wider set of big data (another economy of scale play), are two of the big reasons VTEX is now doubling down on growth in newer markets like Europe and North America. The company now has 122 integrations with localised payment methods.
“At the end of the day, e-commerce software is a combination of knowledge. If you don’t have access to thousands of global cases you can’t imbue the software with knowledge,” Gomide said. “Companies that have been focused on one specific region are now realising that trade is a global thing. China has proven that, so a lot of companies are now coming to us because their existing providers of e-commerce tools can’t ‘do international.’ ” There are very few companies that can serve that global approach and that is why we are betting on being a global commerce platform, not just one focused on Latin America.”
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Latin America Roundup: Uber acquires Cornershop, SoftBank invests in Buser and Olist
Sophia Wood is a principal at Magma Partners, a Latin America-focused seed-stage VC firm with offices in Latin America, Asia and the U.S. Sophia is also the co-founder of LatAm List, an English-language Latin American tech news source.
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Brazil continued to churn out unicorns this month, with Curitiba-based Ebanx becoming the first startup from the southern part of the country to top a $1 billion valuation. U.S.-based FTV Capital provided the investment but did not disclose the amount invested nor the exact valuation of Ebanx after the investment.
Ebanx is an end-to-end payment processor that helps international companies receive payments in the Latin American market, similar to Stripe. Their clients include Airbnb, AliExpress, Pipedrive, Spotify, Uber and Wish, and more than 50 million Latin Americans have conducted transactions with more than 1,000 companies through the Ebanx platform. This investment comes on the heels of exciting partnerships with Uber Pay, Shopify, Spotify and Visa to expand cross-border payment processing across the region.
Ebanx has operations in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia, and will expand their local payment solution, Ebanx Pay, into Colombia in 2020. The company has grown its user base by offering a full-service product that includes market research, 24/7 customer service and anti-fraud technology.
The Ebanx investment is part of a growing interest in Latin American payments startups. Brazil’s PagSeguro and StoneCo had successful IPOs last year, while Mexico’s Conekta and Ecuador’s Kushki have raised large rounds to try to unite the region under a single processor as Latin America rapidly adopts e-commerce.
Uber acquires Cornershop, takes off where Walmart left off
The acquisition of the Chilean-Mexican grocery delivery startup Cornershop has been an emotional roller coaster for Latin American entrepreneurs and investors throughout 2019. First Walmart announced a $225 million deal that would be one of the bigger exits of the region, then the acquisition was blocked by Mexican antitrust institution COFECE. This announcement dealt a blow to the ecosystem as entrepreneurs and VCs had eagerly awaited this boost in liquidity in the local market.
Last-mile delivery and logistics became a very competitive space in Latin America in 2018.
Then in mid-October 2019, Uber announced it would take a 51% stake in Cornershop for a reported $450 million, quadrupling the startup’s value in the four months since the COFECE decision. This deal will consist of cash, investment in Cornershop’s growth and stock in Uber, which IPO’d earlier this year.
However, this deal must also be approved by the Chilean and Mexican antitrust boards, which are expected to release their decisions within the next two weeks. In the meantime, Cornershop will continue its expansion into the Colombian market after it added Peru and Canada in 2019.
Last-mile delivery and logistics became a very competitive space in Latin America in 2018, and many of the players are sitting on enormous pools of capital. Colombia’s Rappi raised $1 billion from SoftBank in early 2019, breaking records for startup investment for the region. Brazil’s iFood raised $500 million from Naspers at the end of 2018. However, delivery continues to be a cash-intensive business, with many of these companies burning through capital quickly to gain market share. Cornershop was an exception and had raised less than $50 million before the acquisition.
Brazil’s Buser, Olist, raise funding from SoftBank
Despite the WeWork crash, SoftBank has continued investing consistently in Brazilian startups. In early October 2019, the Japanese investor led an undisclosed Series B round for Brazilian collaborative bus chartering startup Buser. Buser’s team will invest more than $73 million in growth over the next 12 months to create new alliances for their network of operating partners.
Buser helps coordinate groups of people to charter buses at convenient times and lower prices, disrupting the bureaucratic, anti-competitive and inefficient bus system. The company has grown 1,500% over the past nine months and serves more than 3,000 people per day. While Buser has been popular with locals, traditional bus drivers are calling for regulation to slow the company’s meteoric growth. Buser plans to add more than 100 direct jobs in 200 cities over the next 12 months, and SoftBank’s most recent investment will help power this growth.
Brazil’s e-commerce marketplace integrator Olist also received investment from SoftBank for its Series C, coming in around $46 million. Redpoint eVentures and Valor Capital also participated in the round.
This investment signals the increased interest by traditional retailers in startups that are slowly chipping away at their market share across the region.
Olist connects small businesses to larger product marketplaces to help entrepreneurs sell their products to a larger customer base. They will reportedly use this investment to investigate the development of financial products and look for collaboration with SoftBank’s other companies, like Rappi and Loggi. Based in Curitiba, Olist was founded in 2015 to help small merchants gain market share across the country through a SaaS licensing model to small brick and mortar businesses.
Today, Olist has more than 7,000 customers and uses a drop-shipping model to send products directly from stores to clients around the country, allowing them to grow with a capital-light model. They will use the investment to add up to 100 new employees.
Carrefour Brazil acquires 49% of Ewally
Grocery chain Carrefour acquired a large stake in Brazil-based Ewally after it completed Village Capital’s first regional acceleration program.
Ewally improves financial inclusion in Brazil through a mobile wallet app that allows unbanked clients to pay bills and make purchases online through the blockchain. Carrefour will reportedly use the acquisition to accelerate digital transformation and improve online payment mechanisms throughout Brazil.
Carrefour did not disclose the amount invested and the deal is still subject to approval by Brazilian financial regulation authorities. However, this investment signals the increased interest by traditional retailers in startups that are slowly chipping away at their market share across the region.
News and Notes: Early-stage rounds are getting bigger
Startups in Brazil, Colombia and Argentina raised several rounds this month, ranging from $1.5 million to $13 million. Brazil’s Xerpa, Colombia’s Sempli, Brazil’s Gorilla and Argentina’s Bitso and Worcket were among those that raised capital from local and international investors in October 2019.
Brazilian human resource management platform Xerpa raised $13 million from Vostok Emerging Finance to continue to help companies like MercadoLibre, iFood and QuintoAndar provide benefits for their employees. Previous investors include Nubank’s David Velez, Kaszek Ventures and QED Investors.
Sempli, an online lending platform for small businesses in Colombia, raised an $8 million Series A from new investors Oikocredit and Incofin CVSO, as well as previous investors BID LAB, XTPI Fund, Generación Exponencial, and Impulsum Ventures. To date, Sempli has raised more than $24 million in equity funding. The founders will use this round to grow their portfolio and improve their risk assessment technology to provide more small business loans in Colombia.
Brazil’s Quicko, an alternative mobility startup that uses big data, raised $10 million in October from Brazilian transport company CCR. Quicko’s technology integrates all mobility options — from bicycles to Uber and 99 — to help people get where they need to go as quickly and inexpensively as possible.
Also in Brazil, startup Gorilla Invest raised $8.4 million from Ribbit Capital, Monashees and Iporanga. Gorilla aggregates financial assets so that investors can review all their commitments in one place, and currently manages more than $1.2 billion for 40,000 clients.
Mexican cryptocurrency exchange Bitso raised an undisclosed round from Argentine startup Ripple to expand into the Southern Cone, especially Argentina and Brazil. Other investors in the round included Pantera Capital, Digital Currency Group, Jump Capital and Coinbase.
Looking ahead to November, with unsettled politics in several countries across the region, tech startups are growing despite governmental changes. Some of these changes will likely have a positive effect on the regional ecosystem as people push for more sustainable and equal economic growth.
What to watch next? Last year, Q4 was marked by a wave of large investments as funds and startups look to end the year strong. IFood raised its record-breaking $500 million round in December 2018. We may well see a similar uptick this year as mega-funds like SoftBank have been consistently investing multi-million dollar rounds since June. There is no sign international investment in Latin America will slow through the end of the year, so we can likely look forward to several more growth-stage rounds before the year is out.
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Latin America roundup: SoftBank bets on Brazilian unicorns and Konfio raises $250M for lending plans
SoftBank did not let up the flow of capital to Brazil this month, staying busy despite the WeWork debacle. With two more $100 million-plus rounds in QuintoAndar and MadeiraMadeira, the Japanese investor has funded at least one more unicorn in the Brazilian ecosystem. Their investments in Brazil from the past two months alone far outstrip Latin America’s venture capital funding in all of 2016.
In early September, SoftBank backed QuintoAndar for a $250 million Series D round alongside Dragoneer, General Atlantic and Kaszek Ventures, which recently made headlines for raising $600 million to invest in Latin America. QuintoAndar is a real estate rental startup that simplifies the process of locating and renting an apartment in Brazil. Although the startup only has 2% of the rentals market share in Brazil, QuintoAndar’s tech solution enabled them to scale rapidly, beating out traditional incumbents in the region’s bureaucratic rental structure.
QuintoAndar’s founders ideated the business model while they were struggling to find an apartment in São Paulo after finishing their MBAs at Stanford. They have seen property rentals grow 5x on their platform since raising a $70 million Series C just nine months ago.
SoftBank stayed bullish in Brazil with a $110 million investment in home goods marketplace Madeira Madeira, which has been described as the “Wayfair of Brazil.” This drop-shipping business has grown to sell thousands of products online with a relatively capital-light model that connects buyers directly with warehouses, saving on overhead costs. The SoftBank investment dwarfs all of Madeira Madeira’s previous capital raised — $38.8 million — by almost a factor of three.
Madeira Madeira plans to use the capital to expand across Latin America, as well as improve logistics and customer service.
David Arana, Konfio founder and CEO
Mexico’s Konfio receives $250 million credit line from Goldman Sachs, Victory Park Capital
Konfio provides unsecured loans to small and medium businesses in Mexico that are currently underserved by the traditional banking sector. Goldman Sachs contributed up to $100 million in secured credit to Konfio to allow them to make up to $250 million in loans to 25,000 companies over the next 12 months. Victory Park Capital also contributed to this debt round, bringing Konfio’s total raised to $43 million in equity and $260 million in debt.
This capital mints Konfio as one of the largest fintech startups in the region. It will also allow them to take on larger loan sizes. Konfio’s average loan size hovers around $20,000. Konfio uses credit ratings to calculate risk and disburse loans within 24 hours, and at half the rate of a traditional bank loan.
To date Konfio has served over 1 million clients in what is currently a $100 billion market in Mexico. Mexico’s access to credit is still significantly lower than the rest of Latin America, so Konfio is well-placed to grow within this market, especially with this new funding.
Klar, Mexico’s newest challenger bank, raises $57.5 million from U.S. investors
Mexican challenger bank Klar, a Chime clone, recently raised over $57.5 million in debt and equity in one of Mexico’s largest seed rounds. The $50 million credit line came from San Francisco’s Arc Labs, while Quona Capital led the $7.5 million equity round with support from Santander InnoVentures, aCrew Capital, FJ Labs and Western Technology Investment.
Klar was founded less than 10 months ago to help Mexicans access free and fair financial services through digital banking. Currently Klar offers a debit and a credit product with transparent fees; today, only 15% of Mexicans have access to credit cards, most of which have +60% interest rates and a lot of hidden fees. Klar wants to make banking accessible for everyone in Mexico through their free digital platform.
This startup will be one to watch over the coming months as it competes with Nubank and other local neobanks to bank Mexico’s unbanked.
U.S. and Mexican investors back Flat, an Opendoor clone in Mexico
Mexican property-tech startup Flat is taking the Opendoor model to Latin America. This startup raised an unprecedented $4.6 million in their pre-seed round led by ALL VP, with support from Liquid2 Ventures, Next Billion, Picus Capital and angels.
Besides Mexican e-scooter giant, Grin, Flat’s pre-seed is the largest ever for Mexico. Flat’s founders, Victor Noguera and Bernardo Cordero, are betting on a $25 billion home sales market in Mexico that is currently stuck in the 20th century. Flat will allow homeowners and buyers to gain access to accurate information about home prices (think Zillow in the U.S.), as well as managing the slow process of notarizing the purchase after the fact. With Flat, the startup manages everything from valuation to ownership transfer, all through their platform, and within 72 hours of purchase.
Flat will use this investment to vertically integrate within the Mexican market, rather than expanding across Latin America.
News and notes: Mexican fintechs in focus, more VC funds opening in LatAm
- Other deals in September included Mutuo Financiera’s $100 million credit facility granted by Crayhill Capital Management, a New York-based alternative asset management firm, at the beginning of the month. Mutuo Financiera is a vehicle fleet leasing company that focuses on clean energy transportation. The investment will help the startup acquire new compressed natural gas vehicles to serve increased demand in Mexico for clean transportation alternatives.
- Brazilian growth-stage VC fund Base Partners closed a further $135 million to invest in scaling Latin American startups. The fund, founded by Fernando Spnola and Arthur Mizne and backed by over 43 limited partners, has previously invested in companies like ByteDance and Stripe, recently crowned the U.S.’ third most valuable startup. Base Partners will now compete against investment giants like Kaszek and SoftBank to participate in Latin America’s top expansion stage deals.
- Mexico’s Credijusto, which offers asset-backed loans and equipment leases to SMEs, raised their Series B this month, topping $42 million led by Goldman Sachs and Point72 Ventures. Credijusto has processed more than $90 million in loans since they were founded in 2015 and closed a $100 million credit agreement with Goldman Sachs just months before this round.
- Looking ahead to October, SoftBank is said to be evaluating several investments in Brazil and will likely continue deploying capital rapidly in Latin America’s largest market. We may see a few more unicorns in Brazil before the year is out. It is also likely that the Innovation Fund will make its way out of Brazil to other big markets like Colombia or Mexico, where SoftBank has invested in the past.
- Accion Venture Lab launched a social impact fund and Ewa Capital began raising capital for a female-focused fund in September, so hopefully investment in female founders and inclusive tech will rise in coming months.
- Mexico’s Square clone, Billpocket, also recently announced an undisclosed round from Axon Capital Partners. Billpocket has been accelerating e-payments in Mexico at a triple-digit pace since it started, carving out a name for itself in a competitive space where incumbent Clip has already received funding from SoftBank.
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