Colombian startup Melonn announced a $4.5 million seed round from NFX, Pear, Wollef (previously Jaguar Ventures), Simma Capital, and other angel investors.
The Bogotá–based company offers a fulfillment service for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that have developed their own sales channels, like a website or business WhatsApp and Instagram profiles.
Melonn manages SMEs’ inventories and their entire delivery experience. It wants these companies to be able to compete in terms of online sales with regional e-commerce giants like Mercado Libre or Amazon.
The key of its offering is Melonn’s own warehouse network, where its customers’ inventories are stored. It currently has six warehouses in LatAm’s main cities and wants to have 22 by 2022.
Melonn has proprietary technology that allows the company to have real-time order monitoring for its 185 current customers. Aside from its 75-people tech and management team, the company creates 100 indirect jobs, mostly those of warehouse and delivery workers.
Alejandro Celis and Andrés Felipe Archila cofounded Melonn in 2020, a year that detonated LatAm’s regional e-commerce growth. They both had worked as tech providers for a supermarket chain, which showed them how much SMEs are lagging behind big companies in terms of logistics technology.
Melon has had a 60% monthly sales increase in its first year of operations. With this seed investment, the startup wants to end 2021 with 500 thousand items delivered and is aiming to double that amount in 2022.
