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Orchata raises $4M, aims to build a ‘Gopuff for Latin America’
Luis Mario Garcia grew up in Mexico making deliveries for the grocery stores in his neighborhood. After honing his startup skills in San Francisco, he returned to Mexico with the idea of building a software company.
That’s when he met his co-founder Javier Gonzalez and the pair started Orchata in 2020, a mobile app enabling consumers to get groceries delivered in 15 minutes, with no substitutes and at supermarket prices. Products delivered include fresh fruit, beverages, bread, medicine and household essentials, Garcia told TechCrunch.
Orchata does this by operating a network of micro fulfillment centers — it is already operating in two cities — with technology for efficient picking and hyperfast delivery.
Online food delivery sales in Latin America are projected to reach $9.8 billion by 2024, with the global pandemic driving demand for faster delivery, according to Statista. Garcia sees three different waves in this market: the first one being traditional supermarkets, where you can spend hours, which led to the second wave of food delivery companies, including some big players in the region — for example Rappi in Colombia, which in July raised $500 million in Series F funding at a $5.25 billion valuation in a round led by T. Rowe Price, and Cornershop in Chile, which was acquired by Uber in 2019.
However, Garcia said many of these services still take more than an hour from order to doorstep and may require phone calls if an item is not available. He wants to be part of a third wave — software that is integrated with inventory and delivery that is super fast, and no substitutions.
“This is similar to what is going on around the world, but there is a huge opportunity to bring convenience, to be the Gopuff for Latin America, and we want to build it first in the region,” Garcia said.
The Monterrey-based company was part of Y Combinator’s summer 2020 cohort and on Friday announced a $4 million seed round from a group of investors, including Y Combinator, JAM Fund, FJ Labs, Venture Friends, Investo and Foundation Capital, and angel investors Ross Lipson, Mike Hennessey, Brian Requarth and Javier Mata.
Jonathan Lewy, co-founder of Grin Scooters and founder of Investo, is also an investor in Rappi. He said Garcia was building a product for the end user, with the key being the building of the infrastructure and inventory. Lewy believes Garcia understands how quick delivery should be done and that it is not just about offering a mobile app, but building the technology behind it.
Meanwhile, Justin Mateen, general partner at JAM Fund, and co-founder of Tinder and an early-stage investor, met Garcia over a year ago and was one of the company’s first investors. He said Garcia’s and Gonzalez’s initial idea for the model of grocery stores was still not solving the problem, but then they pivoted to doing fulfillment and inventory themselves.
“He fits the mold of what I look for in a founder, and he is the type of founder that doesn’t give up,” Mateen said. “Luis finally agreed to let me double down on my investment. The model makes sense now, he is on to something and it is now going to be about execution of capital as he scales.”
Both Mateen and Lewy agree that there will be similar apps coming because food delivery is such a large market, but that Orchata has a clear advantage of owning the customer experience from beginning to end.
Having only launched four months ago, Orchata is already processing thousands of orders and is seeing 100% monthly growth. The new funding will enable Orchata to expand into three new cities in Mexico. Garcia is also eyeing Colombia, Brazil, Peru and Chile for future expansion.
The company is also targeting multiple use cases, including someone noticing a forgotten item while cooking to consumers shopping for the week or teenagers needing food for a party.
“We are going to be super convenient to customers, and we think every use case for food delivery will be this way in the future,” Garcia said. “We will eventually introduce our own brands and foods with the goal of being that app that is there anytime you need it.”
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Accusonus raises $3.3M to use AI to help content creators repair the audio in their videos
Accusonus, the Greece and U.S.-based AI company helping content creators improve the audio in their videos, has raised $3.3 million in Series A funding.
The round is led by Athens-based Venture Friends, with participation from Big Pi, IQBility and PJ Tech, along with a syndicate of U.S.-based investors led by Michael Tzannes, who is actually the co-founder of Accusonus (and the former CEO of Aware Inc.).
Launched in 2014, Accusonus has been using AI for various audio and music applications longer than most. The company’s first product was Drumatom, which allows recording engineers to control microphone leakage (also known as bleed or spill) in drum recordings. In 2017, Accusonus followed up with the release of Regroover, an AI software instrument that un-mixes audio loops into stems so that new beat making workflows are possible.
Its products are said to have been used by engineers working with musicians such as Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Goo Goo Dolls, Super Furry Animals, Wilco, Jennifer Lopez and many others.
However, more recently the company has developed a suite of simple-to-use tools aimed at video content and podcast producers that need to repair or “clean up” audio in their creations. With the amount of content being created growing exponentially — often recorded on smartphones and other consumer equipment or turned around quicker than ever — the market beyond music production is huge.
The company’s thinking, explained co-founder and CEO Alex Tsilfidis, is that Accusonus wants to democratise access to high-quality audio via AI-driven tools that remove the learning curve required by traditional audio software.
He says that inventing new algorithms and “painstakingly” fine-tuning the UX of Accusonus’ products has enabled it to offer audio tools that provide ease-of-use to entry-level users while simultaneously speeding up the workflows of audio and video professionals.
Specifically, the Accusonus Enhancement and Repair of Audio (ERA) tools are able to clean up audio recordings via turning a single “virtual” knob within the software. The ERA tools work as plugins and are compatible with major video and audio platforms. These include entry-level editors, such as Audacity and Garageband, and more high-end offerings, such as Adobe Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut, Avid Pro Tools, Apple Logic Pro and Da Vinci Resolve.
Meanwhile, Tsilfidis says there is some advantage to serving both customer groups, too. The company’s professional users often provide feedback that then helps improve its non-professional targeted products (even if there is likely some overlap between the two groups).
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