Yavendió, a startup dedicated to driving sales of e-commerce brands through artificial intelligence (AI) virtual agents on WhatsApp, has announced the closing of its $850,000 pre-seed round.
The capital injection, which will be fundamental to boost the startup’s growth in Latin America, was led by Magma Partners, iThink VC, Semilla Ventures and other angels.
The startup was founded in Lima, Peru.
This investment comes at a crucial time in the evolution of e-commerce in Latin America. According to Statista, the e-commerce market in the region is expected to grow significantly through 2025, with social commerce emerging as a key driver.
With the money raised in this round, the company will invest in the development of a new model that will have the capacity to serve the business, facilitating the setup of virtual sellers and streamlining internal administration.
In addition, new offices will be opened in Mexico to reinforce local presence, and capital will be allocated to expand commerce integrations and strengthen analytical capabilities. The startup is on its way to consolidate its position as an integral solution for brands seeking to scale sales through conversational channels in Latin America.
YaVendió is an AI-powered virtual sales assistant designed to boost e-commerce business sales through platforms such as WhatsApp and social networks. The platform automates interactions with customers, offering 24/7 support to answer queries and facilitate purchases, thus improving sales conversions and customer engagement.
“Unlike other solutions that basically just offer you a platform to order your customers and let you do all the work manually; Yavendió provides you with artificial intelligence agents specialized in retail,” David Tafur, CEO of Yavendió, told Contxto.
The technology integrated by this startup enables the creation of highly specialized virtual AI agents for retail capable of conversing with customers, recommending among hundreds of products, managing payments and even coordinating deliveries, all without human intervention.
In the last year, Yavendió has enabled an intelligent sales channel for more than 100 fashion, footwear, beauty and home goods retailers in Mexico and Peru, and has doubled its business in the last six months thanks to the high adoption of its platform by brands seeking sales solutions via whatsapp and other social networks.
“We invested in Yavendió because they are experts in e-commerce. They have understood that this sector has very specific needs, and their WhatsApp product is much more than a generic chatbot, automating the entire sales process in a unique way,” Nathan Lustig, Managing Partner at Magma Partners, said in a statement.
According to a study, during the third quarter of 2023, WhatsApp was the most used social network in Latin America, with more than 92 percent of internet users using this messaging app.
However, despite this digital shift, many small and medium-sized businesses still struggle to effectively manage their online sales operations, particularly when handling large product catalogs and customer interactions at scale.
Yavendió is already used by more than 100,000 consumers each month and more than 120 brands, according to the company. It also removes barriers with an end-to-end platform that automates most tasks, allowing companies to leverage the conversational channel with high levels of personalization without overloading their teams.
“The close contact achieved on WhatsApp increases the likelihood of a sale. However, the manual operation discouraged many brands. With Yavendió, that complexity becomes an almost automatic process, freeing the team for higher value tasks,” concludes Tafur.
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