Mexican fintech Aviva announced a US$2.2 million pre-seed round led by venture capital fund Wollef. Also participating were Newtopia VC, Seedstars International Ventures, 500 Startups, Xtraordinary VP, and several angel investors from Latin America. Aviva’s founders include Filiberto Castro and David Hernández, who until recently held executive positions at SME lending fintech Konfío.
Aviva, which provides collateral-free loans for nano-businesses, is currently in beta with a group of 500 clients in three municipalities in the State of Mexico: Chalco, Texcoco, and Ixtapaluca. It focuses on clients with little or no financing access and little use or knowledge of technological tools.
To this end, they have created a physical-digital acquisition network based on a video call booth that allows customers to make their credit application and receive a response within five minutes through the same medium.
Filiberto Castro (co-CEO) told Contxto that with the round, they intend to expand their video call booth network, as well as strengthen their credit origination system and launch a credit card.
Aviva’s video call applications involve Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based technology, including natural language processing, which matches customers’ spoken word with the fields of a credit application in real-time. The video technology also allows them to reduce identity fraud and create a risk model.
“Transforming speech into text and inferring emotions and personality from the visual layer of the application’s video gives us an advantage in risk assessment of customers with little credit history, in addition to having a very cost-effective operating model,” explains Hernandez (co-CEO), who was previously director of AI at Konfío.
Aviva gives loans from $10,000 to $15,000 Mexican pesos (between US$500 to US$760). The fintech’s target user lives outside large metropolitan areas. For this reason, they are looking to place their video call booths in retail partner locations, such as supermarkets and construction material stores in small and medium-sized cities.
Main image: David Hernandez (co-founder and co-CEO), Amran Frey (co-founder), and Filiberto Castro (co-founder and co-CEO). (Photo: Aviva)
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