#022: Who is winning Brazil's grocery delivery war?

LatAm unicorn goes transatlantic, e-motos gain speed, and biotech takes a turn for the badass

Hola technopolists,

This week, early-stage investments in e-motorbikes and biotech are adding some adventure to the mix.

Plus, we’re looking at the online grocery wars in Brazil to see who’s winning post covid.

What’s hot

🌍 LatAfrican connections. Ebanx, the Brazilian payments behemoth, has landed in Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria to mark its first operations in Africa. They’ll kick off with a slim product set, focusing on highly popular “mobile money” products before beefing up the suite. Ebanx became an OG LatAm unicorn in 2019 and even touted a much-anticipated IPO before delaying it earlier this year as markets cooled. Now, they’re hoping to continue building anticipation with transcontinental ops in the 3 African countries that combined account for 50% of the continent’s GDP. They’re certainly not the only ones hoping to find the golden payments goose, as they’ll face stiff competition from local incumbent unicorns like Kenya’s Flutterwave — the champion-cum-fallen-angel beset by toxic culture scandals — and Nigeria’s Paystack. Per Rest of World, we should expect more of these transatlantic tech connections in the future, too. (Reuters)

🏍️ Motopapis. Leoparda Electric, a new Brazilian e-motorbike manufacturer, raised an $8.5mn seed round last week led by Monashees and Valor Capital to launch their MVP. The deal is jam-packed with gilded logos on both sides of the table: Leoparda’s co-founders hail from Rappi and Tesla, and its investors also include QED, Marcelo Claure (ex-SoftBank), and former execs at Rappi, Tesla, Kavak, and Uber. Leoparda is banking on two plays: first, they’re aiming to undercut competitor prices with subscription pricing (read: leases with better PR), modular add-ons, and reduced lifetime fuel costs from electric; for everyone else, they’re hoping to win over green warriors by cutting carbon emissions. The opportunity isn’t to be scoffed at: McKinsey estimates that only 1% of the 50mn motorbikes in LatAm are electric, with 10mn units sold per year. (Startups Brasil)

💪🏽 Badass biotech. What if your job was to hunt rare microorganisms in extreme locations and use them to fight climate change? Puna Bio, the Argentine biotech with 2 PhD-wielding female founders, raised a $5mn seed round to make that proposition real. Puna uses harvested “extremophile” microfauna from places like the high-altitude Andean desert to reinvigorate seeds and tired soil in distressed climates. In other words, Puna’s climate scientists find naturally occurring superorganisms for plants, which are then analysed, reproduced, and sold to agribusinesses to improve crop yields and reduce costs. The business model is predicated on the international agreement known as the Nagoya Protocol, a wide-ranging set of environmental standards for genomic intellectual property that essentially amounts to “finders keepers (strings attached)”. (TechCrunch)

What’s not

🏦 Nubank fora. Nubank has announced it will de-list from Brazil’s stock exchange only 9 months after debuting on the exchange, citing the high operational costs of maintaining their listing. Existing investors will be allowed to convert their equity into Nubank NYSE shares (and separately Nubank will also continue trading stock-like depository receipts on Colombia’s exchange). The de-listing trend has gathered steam across LatAm but especially in Mexico, where prominent de-listings from Aeromexico, Monex, and Sanborns have posed serious questions to the attractiveness of local exchanges. Brazilian investors at JPMorgan and General Atlantic might be feeling sheepish after publicly expressing their optimism about the future of Brazilian IPOs just hours before Nubank’s announcement. (Bloomberg Linea)

🔻 Crypto credit. Last week we commemorated one year of legal Bitcoin in El Salvador; this week, Fitch rating agency is “celebrating” the anniversary by downgrading El Salvador’s credit rating to CC. For the uninitiated: there’s only one rating worse (C) before you’re officially in default. Fitch stated that tight liquidity and a low likelihood of renegotiating repayment caused the lower rating — two problems that have links to Bukele’s policy of legalising and purchasing Bitcoin. The $800mn-pound gorilla is a looming $800mn payment due in January ‘23 to none other than the crypto-sceptical IMF. Just after the downgrade, President Bukele announced that he will run for re-election in El Salvador in 2024 — a decision supported by Supreme Court justices (who Bukele appointed) despite a constitutional ban. (CoinDesk)

Stat of the week

The pandemic drastically shifted consumer purchases online, and the digital trend has had a durable impact. So, which companies are eating more of the enlarged pie?

Today we’re taking a tight look at Brazil - and here’s what the data show:

So what? Trust, selection, and convenience are prized levers of value. Consumers gravitate towards the capacious catalogues of ML and Amazon – one-stop-shops with considerable brand power – and there’s not strong loyalty to a local players. One important caveat: while highly prevalent, online sales are a minority of total grocery purchases (72% of Brazilians polled said that they shop from physical grocery stores more frequently than online ones) so there’s still a lot of headroom.

Smart links

Africa: the next frontier for Ebanx (Startups Brasil)

Infographic: Mexico’s top crowdfunding platforms (Latam Fintech Hub)

LatAm is turning to US Dollar stablecoins amid inflation surge (CoinDesk)

Why fewer Colombian startups are striving for unicorn status (Bloomberg Linea)

Opinion: despite the VC winter, Latitud’s Brian Requarth is still bullish on early-stage startups (Startups Brasil)

Amela: the meeting point for female founders in Latin America (Contxto)

Impacta VC launches capital raising program for LatAm startups (Latam List)

Nubank grows “caixinhas” from 500k to 2.25mn users in one week (Startups Brasil)

Google for Startups opens call for women founders in LatAm (Contxto)

SoftBank considers launching third Vision Fund (Reuters)

Salkantay VC closes $26mn fund and is now the largest fund in Peru (TechCrunch)

African and Latin American tech unite (Rest of World)

Mexican women find safety in Facebook’s location-tracking groups (Rest of World)

Another hike for Argentina’s interest rate as inflation expected to reach 100% (Bloomberg Linea)

Samba, scandals and saudades: the battle between Lula and Bolsonaro (FT)

Deals (September 13-20, 2022)

M&A

🇧🇷 Bravium, a Brazilian ecommerce company, has raised a $19.3mn investment from Bridge One as part of its merger a merger with ecommerce businesses Satelital and Atrius

Early stage

🇧🇷 BHub, a Brazilian back office operations platform, raised a $30mn Series A extension led by Monashees and Valor Capital with participation from QED, Picus Capital, and Clocktower Technology Ventures

🇧🇷 Leoparda Electric, a Brazilian electric motorcycle manufacturer, raised an $8.5mn early stage round led by Monashees and Construct Capital with participation from Auteco Mobility, K50 Ventures, Climate Capital, and Marcelo Claure

Seed & pre-seed

🇲🇽 DolarApp, a Mexican crypto fintech, raised a $5mn early stage round from Y Combinator, Kaszek, and angels

🇨🇷 Greenlease, a Costa Rican cleantech, raised a $5mn early stage round from Deetken Impact

🇻🇪 Ubii, a Venezuelan payments fintech, raised a $4.5mn early stage round from undisclosed investors

🇦🇷 Puna Bio, an Argentine biotech, raised a $3.7mn seed round led by At One Ventures and Builders VC with participation from IndieBio, GLOCAL, and Grid Exponential*

🇵🇪 uDocz, a Peruvian edtech, raised a $2mn seed round led by GSV Ventures and Salkantay VC with participation from Latitud and angels

🇧🇷 Gen-t, a Brazilian genomic biotech platform, raised a $1.9mn seed round led by Eduardo Mufarej with participation from angels

🇲🇽 Alima, a Mexican supply chain startup, raised a $1.5mn early stage extension from Soma Capital, Y Combinator, The Dorm Room Fund, Seed9, Pareto and a group of angel

Ad hoc

🇨🇴 Finaktiva, a Colombian credit factoring platform, raised a $25mn debt facility from Bancolombia and responsAbility

🇵🇪 Prestamype, a Peruvian microlender, raised a $2mn loan from the Inter-American Development bank

🇨🇱 Teamcore, a Chile-based retail execution platform, received a majority growth investment from Accel-KKR for an undisclosed amount

*Originally announced September 1

Did I miss any deals? Let me know!