> Parabéns to André Barrence and Fernanda Caloi for opening Google Campus this week in São Paulo. This is Google's first campus in Latin America, and it is open to the public.

DEALS

> KaszeK Ventures joined Redpoint e.Ventures, Quona Capital, and QED in a R$15m investment in Brazilian lending startup BankFacil. This follows a R$10m Series A in 2015. KaszeK, Quona, and QED also co-invested in Mexican lending platform Konfio last month.

> Movile invested R$13m in Brazilian ticketing platform Sympla. Movile has been on an acquisition hot streak since receiving US$40m from Naspers in 2015.  

> José Augusto Schincariol invested R$3m in Brazilian video distributor Samba Tech to support the startup’s launch of Kast, a messaging platform designed to compete with Slack in the US. Samba Tech has also opened a Seattle office to facilitate collaboration with Microsoft.    

> SP Ventures made a US$1m seed investment in Brazilian real-time crop monitoring startup Agrosmart. 

> SP Ventures also invested R$2.5m in Brazilian precision agriculture startup InCeres Sistemas, and R$3.5m in cargo logistics startup Lupeon, through its Fundo de Inovação Paulista (FIP). 

> ALLVP made a seed investment in Aplazame, a Spanish check-out lending platform for e-commerce merchants, to finance the launch of its operations in Mexico.

NEW FUNDS

> Angel Ventures is raising a US$100m fund focused on early-stage investments in Mexico, Chile, Colombia, and Peru.

> e.Bricks Ventures is raising a R$300m fund to focus on health, education, financial services, and SMB services. e.Bricks raised their previous US$100m fund in 2013.

> InvertUP, a private investment vehicle run by incubator Parque Tec that owns a portfolio of LatAm startups worth US$13m, is raising up to US$3m on Costa Rica’s stock exchange from both retail and institutional investors. 

ACCELERATORS

> LAVCA is now accepting information from Latin American accelerators interested in being considered for inclusion in our Accelerator Directory. The directory will be made publically available and shared with LAVCA's community of fund managers, institutional investors, and entrepreneurs.

For more details and to participate, please contact Claudia Rosenbloom.

PEOPLE & PROGRAMS

> Join Village Capital FinTech: Mexico 2016 this Thursday, June 23 for their Venture Forum, showcasing 11 enterprises solving major financial challenges in Mexico. Contact Ben Younkman (ben.younkman@vilcap.com) for details.

> Qualcomm Ventures has partnered with KaszeK Ventures to host QPrize Latin America 2016, an early stage startup competition for US$350k in convertible note funding. Early stage startups based in LatAm with less than US$2m in funding can apply here by July 10. 

> NXTP Labs has launched Latin America’s first agtech accelerator. The six-week AgroTech Accelerator Program is accepting applications this month from startups in Argentina and Uruguay. LAVCA tracked US$12m in VC investment into agtech startups in 2015. 

> ACE Start and ACE Growth are now accepting applications for their next batches of startups.

PARTNERSHIPS

> Chile Global Angels, Fundación Chile’s network of angel investors, and Microsoft accelerator Imagine Business Lab, announced a strategic partnership to support the national early stage tech ecosystem.

> Microsoft has donated US$3.6m in cloud services to 245 NGOs in Chile to date: 

“Estamos convencidos que la tecnología ayuda a mejorar la calidad de vida de las personas, pero muchas veces hay segmentos de la población que quedan excluidos y es ahí donde las empresas debemos participar o generar iniciativas que acerquen estas herramientas y se cree un diálogo abierto y sensato haciéndolo beneficioso para ambas partes,” —Oliver Flögel, gerente general de Microsoft Chile

M&A

> Dentsu Aegis bought Flock, a Mexican digital advertising agency, to push the holding company’s Isobar network into Spanish-speaking Latin American markets. 

DATA

> FOMIN has released a study of the impact of its investments in Vox Impact Investing Fund 1, Promotora Progresa Capital, and NXTP Labs.

> The internet of things (IoT) market in Mexico will see investments worth US$2.18b in 2016, up 13% on last year, according to consultancy IDC.

> Finnovista counts 128 fintech startups in Mexico, 56 in Chile and 70 in Colombia. Finnovista is hosting FINNOSUMMIT in Mexico City on September 20. LAVCA Members can contacts Caitlin Mitchell for a discount.


> LTE connections in Latin America have grown 2.68x over the last year, second only to Asia, according to new telco data from Ovum.

INVESTOR POV

> Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures on vacation: “I was pleasantly surprised to find out that most of our portfolio companies offer unlimited vacation to their employees and that there is almost no abuse of this policy across our portfolio companies.”

The LatAm Venture Bulletin is a news platform of the Latin American Private Equity and Venture Capital Association.

Have news we should include? Please email news@lavca.org.

The LatAm Venture Bulletin is made possible by and with support from: