Credicorp’s Corporate Venture Arm Invests in Peruvian Fintech, Culqi!

Contxto – We’re close to the end of 2018 and this year’s investment rounds do not seem to slow down.

Credicorp, Peru’s giant banking institution, invested in Culqi, the payment processor, through their Corporate Venture arm, Krealo. The amount remains still undisclosed.

Credicorp provides several services to Peruvians, including micro-finance, insurance, investment banking and wealth management.

Their venture arm, Krealo, aims to leverage Credicorp’s branches such as MiBanco’s and BCP’s reach and know-how by investing in digital and internet focused companies.

On a quest to “technologize” traditional companies

Culqi is a peruvian startup founded in 2013 by Amparo Nalvarte and Nicolás Di Pace. Growing over 500% year over year, the fintech company helps SMEs accept online payments, and managed to process around US $52M and help over 3,000 clients, this year.

The company focuses on facilitating the online payment process for buyers, simplifying the integration for developers and encouraging business owners to become more tech-oriented.

Culqi is now Krealo’s first startup investment, and it’s searching for more startups to invest and create synergies with.

Peru is really showing a rapid growing fintech industry. Currently, there are over 75 startups operating in the country, just behind Chile (84) and well above Ecuador (34).

On Corporate Venturing

Krealo’s investment in Culqi is just a small sample of what the corporate venturing landscape is starting to look like in Latin America.

Even though large companies’ investments in startups do not represent significant amounts yet, it’s a quickly-growing trend.

This phenomenon is mainly attributed to the big companies’ complexity when trying to innovate internally. Processes and structures are already well defined and sometimes it’s hard to move around freely or be flexible, thus startups help with this.

In Latin America, we’re already witnessing over 150 corporations joining forces with over 2,000 startups via corporate venturing.

Brazil is clearly leading the continent with 64 investments, followed by Chile and Mexico, with 28 and 24, respectively.

As of now, Peru only has 9 investments – Culqi being one of them – but it is definitely growing quickly.

You can read more about Krealo’s investment in Cuqi here.

– VC