Carabela, Angel Ventures Guadalajara’s seed fund, announced two investments in Mexican startups this week.
The first is Creizer, a startup that offers money advances to small and medium online sellers in Latin America. The amount of this seed investment was not disclosed, but other angel investors, like George Gordon, Head of Latin America at Uber, and José Medina Mora also participated.
With Carabela’s investment, Creizer will seek to grow and strengthen its team, as well as its commercial and technological abilities, to expand its operations in Mexico and LatAm.
The e-commerce sector is growing favorably. According to data from the Online Sales Mexican Association (AMVO), online sales in Mexico grew 81% in 2020 compared to the previous year.
“However, there are thousands of online sellers in Mexico and Latin America that could better leverage the market’s growth if they had access to financing with better conditions,” said Javier Sánchez Aldana, managing partner de Carabela, in a statement. “We see in Creizer the perfect tool for this to be accomplished.”
Nilus, to avoid food waste in LatAm
Nilus is a triple-impact company that develops technology to reduce the cost of healthy food for low-income populations.
Nilus directly buys food from farmers and producers that is in risk of going to waste. It then resells it to marginalized communities at a reduced cost.
The seed round was led by Kalei Ventures, and other investors like Newtopia, Trellis Road, Fredrik Jung Abbou and Alec Oxenford also participated. With Carabela’s investment, Nilus seeks to solve the food waste problem in the region, which implies 220 million tons of food a year that doesn’t reach 47 million people
“At Nilus, we’re redesigning the supply chain for the base of the pyramid, making that healthy food is accessible and available to people with low income in marginalized communities in the region’s main cities”, said Ady Beitler, Nilus’ CEO, in a statement shared by Carabela.
Seed funding for the LatAm region
Creizer and Nilus are Carabela’s fifth and sixth investments, respectively. The seed capital arm of Angel Ventures Guadalajara seeks to support Latin American entrepreneurs who are able to use technology to positively impact people in the region. So far, it has invested in companies in Mexico and Chile.
Carabela seeks to reach a size of $ 100 million by the end of 2021. For its part, Angel Ventures manages two funds ($ 20 million and ~$ 70 million) and has offices in CDMX, Guadalajara, Bogotá and Lima. He has invested in more than 45 startups, including Clip, Kueski, Urbvan and Homie.
