🚲 Pushing Forward
SoftBank strong on LatAm investments, and first female-led unicorn in the region...
Welcome to Tech Latino! This is Stanford Latino’s biweekly newsletter where we capture the emerging trends, biggest deals, and exciting ideas in the LatAm technology environment.
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In the past two weeks…
💰 SoftBank Keeps High Hopes for LatAm Investments: SoftBank’s strategy of focusing on riskier investments has had disastrous results, causing them to lose a record $26.2 billion. However, their Latin American investments have been extremely successful. In the future, they will focus more on investing in Latin America and less in riskier areas.
🦄 Habi, a Colombia-based proptech startup, becomes the country’s second ever Unicorn: Founded in 2019 by Sebastián Noguera and American Brynne McNulty, the company makes the process of selling and buying homes more accessible through their online platform. The company currently operates in Colombia and Mexico. It just raised $200 million in a Series C led by Homebrew and SoftBank funds, bringing their total valuation to over $1 billion. Habi is the first unicorn with a female founder and CEO in LatAm.
💸 Scaling Enterprises project finances Konfío’s project to support female-led SMEs: Konfío, a fintech that became Mexico’s fourth ever unicorn last year, has received a loan of $10 million dollars, which they plan on using to aid financially-excluded communities. This project is aimed to help SMEs in southern Mexican states, and at least half of these funds will go to female-led ones.
🩺 Mexican Healthcare company Welbe has raised $3 Million in a pre-seed round: Welbe will use the capital to improve its technology, attract talent, expand alliances, boost its development and increase its network of doctors. Welbe has developed technologies that manages workers’ health through data collection and artificial intelligence. This allows all their clinical history data to be stored in one place and allow doctors to make more effective diagnosis.
Spotlights : The Four F’s!
Every week, we spotlight one of each: a firm, a fund, a founder, and a food item. This week, we look at Platzi, Habi’s founder Sebastian Noguera, 17Sigma, and Bandeja Paisa!
🏫 Firm Spotlight: Platzi
Platzi is a Colombian startup founded in 2012 by Christian Van Der Henst and John Freddy Vega. Platzi is an online educational platform where students can learn subjects like business, marketing, programming and design. They have over 25 investors, and raised $62M in their last round of funding. They currently have more than 80,000 students using their platform and score above a 70% completion rate for their courses.
💪🏽 Founder Spotlight: Sebastian Noguera
Originally from Bogotá, Colombia, Sebastian Noguera is the President and Co-Founder of Habi, a Colombian proptech, and the Co-Founder of Marqueo, the largest online supermarket in Colombia. He graduated from Los Andes University in Colombia with a Bachelors in Industrial Engineering and Economics. He is now dedicated to Habi and participates actively in the Latin American start-up ecosystem.
💸 Fund Spotlight: 17Sigma
17Sigma is a Latin American VC fund started in Argentina. The founder, Pierpaolo Barberi, is also the founder of Ulala. Looking to invest in early stage startups across Latin America, the fund has raised over $30M and invested in startups like OnTop, Truora, and Foodology.
🇨🇴 Food Spotlight: Bandeja Paisa
Bandeja Paisa is a classic dish from Colombia. Typically served in Medellin, la Bandeja Paisa combines different ingredients to make a blend of flavors like no other. With a base of rice, it includes chorizo, fried egg, plantains, and more.
💡 This week’s reads:
👩💻 128 LATAM Women Founded Startups Raised $4B+ in 2021
🦈 Una 'shark tank' guayaquileña apoya talentos fintech en América Latina
🏦 Neon triples revenue in quest to become the biggest bank for Brazil’s working class
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