> SoftBank led a R$190m investment in Olist, a Brazilian e-commerce platform, with follow-on from Redpoint eventures and Valor Capital. Endeavor Catalyst, FJ Labs, and 500 Startups invested previously.
> #CVC Qualcomm Ventures led a R$40m investment in idwall, a Brazilian validation and identification services startup, with participation from ONEVC and Grupo Globo, and follow-on from monashees and Canary. Mercado Libre and 500 Startups invested previously.
> Fifth Wall Ventures led a US$10m investment in Cobli, a Brazilian telematics and fleet management SaaS platform, with participation from Valor Capital, NXTP Ventures, GLP, and angels including Hans Tung (GGV) and Sheel Tyle (Amplo).
- Parker Treacy (CEO) and Rodrigo Mourad (COO) founded Cobli in 2017.
- Treacy says 91% of commercial vehicles in LatAm currently operate with maps and walkie-talkies. “Cobli is an IoT technology that helps fleets of any type or size digitize their operations, cut costs, optimize their routes, and integrate their vehicle data with their end clients.”
- Treacy notes that fleet connectivity in the US has experienced a recent boom in adoption, “minting numerous VC-backed unicorns along the way, such as Samsara, KeepTruckin, Fleetmatics, and Telogis.” He says LatAm has about the same number of commercial vehicles, with a fraction of the funding for trucking/logistics tech.
> #IMPACT #EDTECH Canary and Valor Capital led a R$20m investment in Alicerce, a Brazilian network of education centers to supplement students in the public school system living in city peripheries.
- Angels including Armínio Fraga, David Feffer, Luiz Fernando Figueiredo, Wolff Klabin, and Daniel Goldberg participated in the round. Alicerce previously raised capital from Good Karma Ventures.
> #FINTECH Brazilian fintech Cerc raised R$20m from Parallax and an undisclosed investor. Parallax invested previously, as did angels Fabio Barbosa (Santander), Marcos Lisboa (Insper), Gustavo Roxo (BTG Pactual), and Jose Bonchristiano (Tempo Participações). Cerc (Central de Recebíveis) is authorized by Brazil’s Central Bank to act as a registrar of receivables for collateral in credit operations.
> NFX led a US$4.4m investment in Zubale, a Mexican crowdsourcing platform for retailers to conduct point-of-sales analysis, with participation from Industry Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures, XFactor fund, and angels including Jonathan Swanson (Thumbtack), Sergio Romo (Grow), and Bob White (Bain Capital). Pear VC invested previously.
- Co-founders Allison Campbell and Sebastian Monroy met at HBS after working respectively at Walmart and P&G.
> Astella led a R$15m investment in Exact Sales, a Florianopolis-based pre-sales optimization platform, with follow-on from CVentures and Vesper Ventures.
- Exact Sales was founded by Felipe Roman and Théo Orosco in 2015.
> monashees led an undisclosed investment in Simetrik Universal Reconciliator, a Colombia-based B2B SaaS platform for automatic financial reconciliation, with participation from Global Founders Capital, Alpha4, and Mercado Libre. This is the company’s first outside capital since participating in Y Combinator (W18).
- Why Simetrik? CEO Alejandro Casas says: "We had a previous company (Ropeo - last mile e-commerce) where we used to have these kinds of issues, we never knew if the money we sold online actually got to the bank. We realized this was a huge pain point and we had an expertise in tech and finance to address it. We started with Rappi as our first client providing visibility and control over all of their transactions.
- Casas says Simetrik currently reconciles over 11 million transactions daily for clients in Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Perú, Uruguay, and the US, including Mercado Libre, Rappi, Banco de Bogotá, Argos, and Old Mutual.
> #IMPACT #CVC Elevar Equity led a US$3m Series A in Canasta Rosa, a Mexico-based marketplace for DIY and handmade goods, with participation from WPSS Consumer Investments and angels from Mercado Libre, P&G, Fitpass, and others.
- Founder and CEO Deborah Dana explains how her investing experience as Managing Partner of Soldiers Field Angels informed her current work: “It was a great experience working with entrepreneurs both as a VC fund, but also as a mentor, that moved me to launch a platform which could grow entrepreneurs on a micro level.”
- Dana notes the sell side of the platform has grown 100% organically: “It has given us great insight on the huge demand that existed for a platform with low barriers for entry and factors which can democratize e-commerce, especially for women.”
> #IMPACT Acumen LatAm Capital Partners made an undisclosed investment in SUNCOLOMBIA, a Colombian solar energy company providing access to reliable energy in rural areas.
> ALLVP and InQlab invested ~US$2.5m in Slang, a Boston-based edtech focused on career development. ALLVP partnered with Slang earlier this year to launch a free English course for Spanish-speaking entrepreneurs.
> Confrapar invested R$7.5m in Compass 3D, a consumer dental tech company based in Belo Horizonte.
> #FINTECH Redpoint eventures and angels invested R$4.5m in Antecipa, a B2B receivables platform. Antecipa previously raised ~R$13m across three rounds from investors including DGF, Yellow Ventures, Osher Tech, and 42K.
> #CVC #INFRA EDP Ventures Brasil and Criatec 3, managed by Inseed Investimentos, invested R$4.5m in Fractal Engenharia e Sistemas, a Brazilian smart monitoring system for hydroelectric dams.
- Brazil has suffered two catastrophic tailings dam failures in recent years (2015 and 2019), both owned by mining giant Vale.
> Geekhunter, a Brazilian HRtech platform for hiring software engineers, raised R$2m from Bossa Nova Investimentos, 42K Investimentos, Gavea Angels, and Hangar 8.
> GlooPay, a Brazilian payments startup focused on the under-banked, raised R$1.2m from North Star and Axen Capital.
> Alaya Capital Partners made undisclosed investments in Inti Tech, a Chilean manufacturer of robots to clean solar panels without use of water; Entel.ai, an Argentine healthtech working on image-based diagnosis; and Aquabyte, a US/Norwegian aquaculture monitoring startup.
> Verus Group made an undisclosed investment in Alstra, a Brazilian job matching platform.
> Redwood Ventures made an undisclosed investment in Sojourn, a Puerto Rico-based short-term rental platform.
> #AFRICA Stone Pagamentos co-founder made an undisclosed investment in Tutuka, a South African payments processor that operates in a number of LatAm markets.
> #US #CVC #5G Telefonica Innovation Ventures invested in Massachusetts-based Altiostar Networks, joining Qualcomm, Rakuten, Cisco, Tech Mahindra, and others.
- Telefonica and Altiostar are deploying pilots in Brazil, Colombia, and Perú.
> #US #DEBT MPOWER, an American provider of educational loans to international and DACA students, raised US$100m in debt financing from Goldman Sachs. Variv Capital and Chilango Ventures invested in MPOWER in 2017; Mexico was a key market at the time.
> #PE FTV Capital, a US-based growth equity firm, made an undisclosed follow-on investment in Brazilian payments processor EBANX at a reported valuation over US$1b. FTV Capital invested US$30m in 2018 with participation from Endeavor Catalyst.
> #PE #EDTECH Eleva, a Brazilian network of K-12 schools founded by Gera Capital and backed by Jorge Paulo Lemann and Warburg Pincus, is looking to raise US$200m to fund expansion.
> #PUBLIC UOL is selling an additional US$671.5m of its shares of PagSeguro.