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After successfully meeting the challenges of the Latin American economies, a group of young digital companies has become this year the new generation of "unicorns" South America, reaching the value of 1,000 million US dollars with which thousands of startups have illusions. the region.
The Brazilians 99, Nubank, PagSeguro and ArcoEducação, as well as the Colombian Rappi, joined a handful of "techno-latins" forged in the years following the bursting of the Internet bubble, which had already received the nickname of "unicorn" for its rarity. passing the value threshold. At the limit, there is a strong group integrated among others by the Argentinian Etermax.
In 2017, venture capital funds disbursed more than $ 1,000 million, an unprecedented amount, said Julie Ruvolo, venture capital director of the Latin American Private Equity Association (Lavca) .
"In 2018, more than $ 100 million of investment has been invested, with increased participation from global investors (such as SoftBank or Tencent)," said Ruvolo, who anticipates new records this year.
Brazil, which has the largest number of unicorns, absorbed 859 million USD in 113 agreements in 2017.
In the case of the PagSeguro (Uol) online payment system and the ArcoEducação education platform, the companies added value after the successful launch on Wall Street. The others followed different paths.
Brazilian rival Uber
Six years after the launch, "99", the Brazilian platform that connects taxis and private drivers to passengers, has become a unicorn by receiving this year more than 100 million US dollars from DiDi Chuxing, the Chinese Uber.
The application launched with the ambition to be global is present in 500 cities. It outperformed the recession between 2015 and 2016 and reached 700% in 2017, said its president, Matheus Moraes, 31.
Arriving in the present, he said, meant transforming Brazil's infrastructure problems into opportunity and price competition: "The strategy is to offer more competitive fares, with more profit for the driver ". According to Moraes, 300,000 drivers receive 20% more than a self-employed worker and 14 million passengers pay 15% less. Today, 99 refines the creativity to gain ground, with for example 50% of discount during the elections.
"Break the inertia"
Nubank is a Brazilian fintech, whose founders – among them the Colombian David Vélez, 37 years old – were created in 2013 with the aim of "breaking with the inertia of the system" and demonstrating that "there are no sacred industries" innovation
In March, they managed to make Nubank a digital bank with the largest number of customers outside Asia, worth more than US $ 1 billion. It was not without pitfalls: "The macroeconomic environment was a very important challenge. Since our launch, Brazil's GDP has declined by 8%, "said Vélez, who recalls the challenge of attracting investors despite the" noise ".
But there are still legal obstacles to progress in a 90% controlled market by banks. According to Mr. Vélez, the basic objective is to reach Brazilian consumers excluded from the system. "It's the first minute of the first half of the match," he said.
The orange wave
Since 2015, the husky orange of the Colombian Rappi, a service ranging from the delivery of pizzas to money through the walking of pets or the search for forgotten keys, has spread throughout 27 cities of Colombia, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina.
Recalled by Yaccinator, the accelerator that gave birth to Airbnb and Dropbox, Rappi also reached adulthood to become the first Colombian unicorn. His model of collaborative economics, with distributors who, according to the company, are not employees (as his name indicates), collected in September 200 million US dollars during a lap led by the Asian DST Global Fund.
Currently, with its promise of efficiency in high-speed day-to-day tasks, it is expanding its wave of truckers to Latin America and continues to cross the street with a validated company, despite the emerging claims of labor rights in some places.
Millions at stake
In a ranking of Surfing Tsunamis and NXTP Labs, with the support of the Inter-American Development Bank, social game developer Etermax is approaching the $ 1,000 million US. Máximo Cavazzani (33) created the company in 2009 in Argentina, the birthplace of Mercado Libre, Globant and Despegar, dedicated to Wall Street.
From there were born Apalabrados, the most downloaded game in Spain in 2012, and Asked, which became viral in the United States, Finland and Turkey. The always complex local environment, explains Cavazzani, strengthens the entrepreneurs.
"In 2009, the global economic crisis wreaked havoc and Argentina was in a complicated financial phase and access to credit was non-existent, which forced us to discipline ourselves from day one," he said. said the leader of the enlarged company until Uruguay, Mexico Germany and soon Brazil.
In the country of South America, he says, it's not like in Silicon Valley, where an idea is raising money and starting. "We had to generate enough capital to meet the payroll from the start." In addition, his great sophistication made it difficult to obtain talent. Nevertheless, Etermax advances to become one of the rarest Latin American unicorns.
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