Happy Sunday!
For those of you interested in LatAm Tech (I truly hope it is 100% of my readers, if not, you are subscribed in the wrong newsletter đ ) â Itau BBA will be hosting this coming week, on April 7 and 8, its first Tech Founders Summit. We will have two days of panels with founders of companies such as Loggi, Creditas, Cloudwalk, Frete.com, Nuvemshop, Olist⌠and also partners of renowned funds such as Softbank, Riverwood, General Atlantic and more. Donât miss out! To watch it online, sign up here. If you happen to be in SP and want to attend in person, sign up here. Note: we have limited capacity!
Diversity everywhereâŚ
In 2021, 519 unicorns were born.Â
In early 2022, we crossed the 1,000 mark for the first time.Â
Currently, the total unicorn count stands at 1,066. Diversity: 48% are located outside of the US.
Speaking of, this week I will discuss Femtech. It is a fact: womenâs health has long been underfunded and understudied. Some points to back this statement:
Between 1977 and 1993, women of childbearing age werenât allowed to participate in certain clinical trials.
Outside of cancer, ~1% of health care research and innovation goes to womenâs health conditions.
Enter Femtech â now on the rise, exceeding $1B in VC funding for the 1st time last year (up from $695m in 2020). These companies serve maternal and sexual health needs. Currently, there are 763 femtechs worldwide. Kudos to Oya Care, a brazilian femtech growing exponentially.
Global Market Insights estimated the industry was worth $22.5B+ in 2020 and could grow to $65.3B by 2027.
Now â letâs go ahead to the weekâs news⌠Please bear in mind that these are strictly my opinion, based on my background and personal interests. Feel free to share this newsletter with anyone who might be interested â to subscribe, just click on the link below!
2TM, Brazilian holding that contains startups such as Mercado Bitcoin, focused on creating infrastructure to the financial market based on blockchain technology, was acquired by Coinbase at a USD 2.2 bn valuation.
Latitud, which aims to become âthe operating system for every venture-backed company in Latin America,â raised USD $11.5 million from Andreesen Horowitz, Endeavor, Canary, NfX, FJ Labs and others.
Amidst the fierce competition for tech talent in the region, Loggi established its new tech hub in Portugal in January 2021. The office is growing in full speed as tech talent migrated to Europe â it currently has 80 employees from 16 different nationalities and hopes to reach the 150 mark by the end of 2022.
Gabriel, startup focused on developing a network of private cameras across Brazil in order to help with the countryâs security, announced its first acquisition: Retina Vision. The company developed and algorithm that can detect and read car plates, determining in real time if the vehicle is either robbed or missing. Gabriel recently raised proceeds from Softbank.
British Digital Bank Revolut hires Glauber Mota, former BTG partner, as LatAm CEO in order to initiate its operations in the region. The company is currently present in 35 countries, has 3,000 employees and a valuation of USD 33bn.
Salu, Brazilian one-stop-shop for companies in matters that are related to occupational medicine and occupational health and safety, raised USD 2.5bn in a round with the participation of Softbank LatAm Fund and Aggir Ventures.
In Q4 of 2021, the total amount of transactions using PIX surpassed that of credit or debit cards for the first time. PIX had a total of BRL 3.89bn, compared to a 3.85bn of debit card transactions and a 3.73 bn of credit card transactions.
MĂŠliuz reported good 4Q21 operating metrics, but weak EBITDA. The highlights of the results were growth of 34% QoQ in shoppers and 52% QoQ in GMV in Brazil. The take rate also inched up in 4Q21, to 7.4%, vs. a 6.4% pace for FY21. This drove consolidated net revenue up to BRL 97.7 million (from BRL 59 million in 3Q21) and more than 120% YoY relative to 2020.
The Brazilian IRS announced that PIX will now be allowed as means of payment or rebursement for income tax.
German fintech SumUp announced that it will initiate operations in Peru between April and May of this year. According to the LatAm CEO, Fabiano Camperlingo, the objective is to increase the presence of the company in Latin America even more.
Datanomik, Uruguayan B2B Open Banking platform that helps companies get easy access to financial information through a proprietary API that gathers real-time and standardized data directly from banks and other institutions such as payment service providers and ecommerce platforms, announced a USD 6mm seed round with the participation of A16z, Canary, Latitud Capital and other angel investors.
Lojas Americanas, Brazilian retail giant, announces its new Corporate Venture Capital Fund led by Alexandre Messina. The size of the fund was not disclosed, but the objective is to invest in startups on a pre-seed, seed and series A stage. Ideally, the invested companies will have a connection to the Americanas ecosystem, with a tested product-market fit and a revenue of BRL 10.000/month.
B3, Brazilian stock exchange, establishes a partnership with fintech Marvin in order to register in its systems credit card receivables. That is, B3 is starting to operate similar to a âdigital registryâ, as credit card receivables will be exposed to the entire market. Through the platform, if a Company decides to anticipate its receivables to use them as credit, the transaction will be registered and transparent to other market agents.
Brazilian micro and small companies registered a better performance in ESG standards when compared to medium and large companies. In fact, their performance was 46% better according to a recent study.
What am I reading?
What did I listen/watch?
The Knowledge Project:
Documentary on Netflix Trust No One: The Hunt of the Crypto King
Quote of the week:
â Adaptability is key.â Marc Andreessen
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