DEALS
> 🛴Mexican e-scooter startup Grin raised a US$45.7m Series A and merged with Ride in Brazil.
- Lukasz Gadowski, Founder of Delivery Hero, led Grin’s Series A, with participation from existing investors Shasta Ventures, DCM, SV Angel, Trinity Ventures, monashees, and Base10 Partners.
- Grin raised an undisclosed seed round from monashees, Sinai Ventures, Liquid2 Ventures, 500 Startups, Base10 Partners, Y Combinator, and others earlier this year, and was part of the YC Spring 2018 cohort.
- Grin Co-founder Sergio Romo says the objective is to become the leading player in Latin America, “Not only in terms of customer base and footprint, but in terms of innovation.”
> #CVC Visa made its first investment in Brazil in Conductor, a payments processing platform backed by Riverwood Capital, through its Visa Ventures arm in Silicon Valley.
- Visa also led a US$12.5m investment in YellowPepper (backed by LIV Capital and others) earlier this year.
> Sequoia Capital and Zetta Venture Partners invested US$2.25m in Rever, a Mexican employee innovation management platform. This is Sequoia’s first known investment in a Mexican startup. Sequoia’s other investments in the region include Nubank and Rappi.
> Innova Capital led a R$22m Series A investment in Bom Pra Crédito, a Brazilian consumer lending platform, with participation from Astella Investimentos. Astella led the seed round in 2017.
> Scale Capital led a US$5m investment in U-Planner, a Chilean edtech platform for higher education.
> NXTP Labs led a US$1.5m investment in RetailApp, a Miami-based retail analytics platform, with participation from Indicator Capital, Alpha4 Ventures, and others.
> #CVC Brazilian secure printing company Valid (BVMF: VLID3) acquired a majority stake in Brazilian agtech Agrotopus for R$6.5m.
> The Gontijo family office led a R$5m investment in Alfred, a Brazilian e-commerce startup building locker facilities for parcel delivery in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Alfred also exchanged shares with Pakpobox, a Chinese locker pioneer partnered with Alibaba, through a strategic partnership. Alfred founder Marcio Artiaga says: “Queremos ser o Banco24Horas dos pacotes.”
> Colombian gym network FitPal raised ~US$330k from investor group Patrimonio Autónomo, Cóndor, and startup incubator Inqlab.
> Anjos do Brasil invested R$525k in Manipulaê, a Brazilian healthtech platform connecting patients to compounding pharmacies.
> Village Capital invested US$75k each in the winners of its 2018 Fintech Latam Program: Vexi, a Mexican credit card app for millennials, and Siembro, an Argentinean fintech platform for agribusiness.
> Aguassanta DI, the real estate holding of Cosan, will invest ~R$4.5m to build an agtech innovation center called AgTech Garage Campus Vale do Piracicaba outside of São Paulo.
> Brazilian proptech venture builder Construtech Ventures made its first investment outside of Brazil in Infraspeak, a Portuguese infrastructure management platform.
> #PE CPPIB (Canada Pension Plan Investment Board) increased its exposure to Brazilian tech with a US$85m investment in Mutant, a contact center technology software platform, with participation from debt investor Adams Street.
- Mutant spun out of Genesys Prime, the Brazilian operation of Genesys, which was acquired by British PE firm Permira in 2011. Permira and US VC firm Technology Crossover Ventures made their first Brazilian direct investment in Mutant in 2016.
- Mutant has been actively acquiring related companies, including Dextra, quality management TSA, CCM7, and U-Near.
> #PE Axxon Group acquired a majority stake in the Brazilian operations of Westwing, a home furnishings/electronics retailer previously backed by Rocket Internet.
> CORRECTION: Loggi recently raised US$100m from SoftBank as part of a new US$111m round with participation from KaszeK Ventures. Qualcomm Ventures and Iporanga Investimentos also participated in the round. Loggi previously raised capital from Qualcomm Ventures, monashees, Iporanga Investimentos, and Dragoneer Investment Group.
> UPDATE: Rebel, a Brazilian personal credit startup, raised US$4m (previously undisclosed) from monashees, XP Investimentos, Point Break Capital, and family office J. Malucelli. monashees was the company’s first investor in 2017.