> #DEBT Credijusto raised US$100m in debt financing from Credit Suisse Group. Credijusto separately raised US$100m in debt from Goldman Sachs in 2019.
- Co-CEO David Portiz says this is an important milestone. “It comes just one year after Goldman Sachs made their first investment and further expands and diversifies our capital base in this highly uncertain and volatile economic environment. The additional funding will further unlock important opportunities and enable us to increase lending to Mexican businesses.”
>Â #HEALTHTECH Brazilian consumer orthodontics startup SouSmile raised a US$10m Series A from Global Founders Capital, KaszeK Ventures, and Canary. SouSmile raised R$20m in 2019.
>Â DILA Capital led an undisclosed Series A in payments platform Kushki, with participation from KaszeK Ventures, Magma Partners, Clocktower Ventures, and Conexo.
- Kushki is New York-based with offices in Ecuador, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico.
>Â #M&A MercadoLibre acquired Lagash, a digital products developer with operations in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Uruguay.
- Lagash’s 250+ developers will join Mercado-Libre’s 3,400 technology professionals to handle growing IT development needs as it continues to grow its footprint in the e-commerce space and expand into other areas such as fintech and logistics.
>Â Argentine car marketplace Karvi raised US$3m from Pelham Capital and others.
>Â #HEALTHTECH Brazilian healthtech VivaBem raised US$2.5m from Webrock Ventures and Doktor.se, a Swedish telemedicine provider, to expand digital primary care services in Brazil.
>Â Capital Invent led a MXN$27.6m round in Dev.f, a Mexican edtech for programmers.
> #US #HEALTHTECH Boston-based Bloomer Tech raised a US$3m seed round from Material Impact and others. Bloomer Tech is developing a bra-like ECG device to monitor women’s cardiovascular health.Â
- Co-Founder Alicia Chong is from Costa Rica and a WeXchange alum, where she met one of her angel investors in 2017. Alicia Chong on the importance of funding tech for women’s cardiovascular health:
"There has been over 20 years of evidence-based research that shows that women and men’s physiological systems are different, and a movement to raise awareness about heart disease in women, which currently affects 44M women in the US and 1 in 3 worldwide. It's extremely important because we need more solutions in these underserved fields for populations that haven't traditionally been included in clinical research. Women were included in clinical trials until 1993. Funding an underserved field can open the doors to many others too, we look forward to seeing that happen."
> VC investment in Latin American startups has quadrupled since 2016 to a record US$2b in 2018, according to LAVCA data. Access LAVCA’s Annual Review of Tech Investment in Latin America for the details.