latin america

Alibaba eyes logistics growth in LatAm as China commerce slows • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in alibaba, brazil, China, Commerce, eCommerce, latin americaNo Comments

Cainiao, the logistics arm of Alibaba, is traveling far from home to seek expansion for its business. The company recently launched its first parcel distribution center in Brazil, adding to its regional network of sorting centers in Mexico and Chile, it said Monday. Alibaba’s e-commerce business in China has been hurt by a combination of a cooling economy and aggressive rivals like Pinduoduo. For the first time, the firm didn’t disclose the sales tally for its annual “Singles Day” shopping festival, which fell on November 11 and used to come with a Super Bowl-like gala featuring pop idols and Jack Ma himself. Cainiao has been following AliExpress abroad, helping the Alibaba-owned cross-border marketplace deliver Chinese goods to consumers around the world. But it’s now ramping up domestic services in some countries, hoping to turn local retailers into its clients. Earlier this year, the logistics giant began providing express courier service in Brazil, which now spans over 1,000 cities. The new facility in Brazil is slated to further boost Cainiao’s presence in the country. The plan is to open nine more distribution centers in seven states and set up 1,000 “smart lockers” across ten cities over the next three years. Smart lockers, which let customers pick up their e-commerce packages, have become a common sight in China. It saves couriers from running up and down buildings to deliver to people’s doorstep and helps reduce human contact during COVID-19 times. In Brazil, Cainiao aims to use the infrastructure for intra-city and cross-border logistics services as well as food delivery in the future. One of Cainiao’s smart locker clients is Piticas, a retail franchise focused on geek and pop culture products. “Our consumers can shop online and receive their parcels in a few days. In the future, we look forward to cooperating with Cainiao to utilize its smart lockers, which gives our customers more options for pick-up, as well as imports from China to Brazil, further increasing the efficiency of our supply chain,” said Vinicius Rossetti, CEO of Piticas, in a statement. Cainiao also wants to help Brazilian merchants export goods like coffee, nuts, and propolis to China, reversing the traditional trade route. The company currently operates eight weekly chartered flights between China and Brazil and plans to add more air and sea routes between the countries. In July, Cainiao opened its sorting center in Israel, bringing the number of its overseas sorting centers in use to ten at the time. As of June, Cainiao had more than 7,700 smart lockers in operation in Europe. The logistics unit accounted for roughly 5.6% of Alibaba’s revenues in the three months ended June.

Ping wants to simplify global payments while helping Latin Americans embrace crypto • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 9, 2022Posted in bank transfers, Fintech, latin america, ping, VentureNo Comments

If the global pandemic taught us anything, it’s that you could work from anywhere as long as you had a computer and good wireless signal. However, getting paid when you live, say, in Argentina but work for a company on the other side of the world is not so simple. Many fintech startups have taken on this challenge, including Ping. The company was started in 2021 to solve payment challenges in Latin America, where about 70% of the population does not have a traditional bank account. Today, it is a digital payment tool, available on Android, iOS and desktop, facilitating international payments for remote workers, contractors and freelancers in both their local currency and in fiat and cryptocurrency. Ping users create a free account in U.S. dollars to receive bank transfers in either their local currency or crypto, including Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin. It also provides an invoicing system so that freelancers and contractors can send invoices to their employers. The company makes money from fees from its professional tier. The company was founded by Argentine natives Pablo Orlando, Mary Saracco and her brother, Jack Saracco. The team has a heavy background in both cryptocurrency and finance, having worked previously at organizations such as UBS Investment Bank, World Bank, Deloitte and the Stock Exchange of Buenos Aires. When more Latin Americans were working from home following the pandemic, Mary Saracco said the company realized how important it was to have a stable way to get paid amid inclusionary countries — and unstable economies made earning in U.S. dollars “extremely appealing.” “Then we said, ‘okay, there are clearly a lot of people working remotely in Latin America looking for higher paying jobs in dollars. Why don’t we help people?’” she told ZebethMedia. Ping is now being used in 16 countries. That’s also when Jack Saracco’s background in crypto came into play. He led the building of the company on the rails of Latamex, Latin America’s largest fiat-to-crypto gateway that provides what he told ZebethMedia is a safe option for users to buy and sell crypto from exchanges like Binance. The possibility of opening a U.S. bank account or a crypto account and receiving a payment in U.S. dollars while also seamlessly swapping from one to another and making withdrawals in any country was “certainly an interesting niche market that’s growing in the region,” Jack Saracco added. That combination of payment from anywhere and the ability to operate in crypto seems to have caught on early for Ping. The platform launched four months ago, and within its first month of operations, the company generated over $1 million in payment volume, CEO Pablo Orlando told ZebethMedia. He also said that it’s too early to discuss much of the company’s traction but did say that users are coming back monthly, and in some cases within 15 days to use Ping again. The company is now also working off of $15 million in seed funding from a group of investors, including Y Combinator, Race Capital, BlockTower, Danhua Capital, Signum Capital and Goat Capital. The funds will be deployed into team expansion, including hires for marketing and sales, and into product development in what will become a premium feature that will be a monthly subscription. Mary Saracco expects that to launch in March.

Quinio’s $40M equity, debt raise shows LatAm is strong market for e-commerce aggregators • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in Commerce, e-commerce aggregator, latin america, Quinio, VentureNo Comments

Quinio, an e-commerce aggregator that acquires, operates and builds consumer packaged e-commerce brands across Latin America, secured a $40 million boost in both equity and debt. It’s an interesting time for e-commerce aggregators. Over the past year, the market went from hot, hot, hot to cool, though some aggregators still held on and were even able to close on venture capital deals. For example, OpenStore closed on $32 million in September, while secondhand apparel aggregator Gently took in $2 million of pre-seed dollars and Una Brands bagged $30 million to acquire APAC brands. Quinio’s co-founder and CEO Juan Gavito said via email that he witnessed similar changes this year, calling 2022 “an atypical year for e-commerce” as consumers’ shopping habits shifted back to in-person after two years of purchasing largely online. “This shift created a more challenging environment for e-commerce aggregators who benefited strongly from the rapid acceleration seen during 2020 and 2021,” he told ZebethMedia. “We expect the market to settle down a bit during this year and get back to pre-COVID growth rates for 2023.” Gavito started Quinio in 2020 with his brother, Santiago Gavito, and Iker Garay. We previously profiled the company in December 2021 when it raised $20 million in seed funding, also a mix of equity and debt. The company focuses on brands in the areas of home and kitchen, beauty and personal care, baby, health and household items. It already owns and operates several brands that have a presence in Mexico, Colombia, Chile and the U.S. Over the past year, Gavito also saw the growth environment become more challenging, which led to industry peers “struggling to fulfill their projections.” Many of Quinio’s competitors also “struggled with fundraising and/or decided to reduce the pace of acquisitions, creating an interesting opportunity for us to find well-positioned brands at attractive valuations.” By “well-positioned,” he noted that the company doubled down on business development and M&A rather than cutting both as other aggregators have had to do. And although Latin America’s e-commerce market continues to be one of the fastest-growing regions in the world, and is expected to grow over 50% by 2025, Quinio also added some protections into its process for seeking out companies to acquire. That included implementing new criteria filters when evaluating new brands so that the company increases its probability of acquiring a successful brand. The company is also more product-centered and is betting more on technology than when it started, Gavito said. The strategy seems to have paid off so far. Quinio is a profitable company with over 100 employees and growing rapidly, he said. Meanwhile, Gavito expects to end 2022 with over $50 million in annual recurring revenue, and its brands are reporting solid growth while gaining a regional presence. The new funding gives the company over $60 million in total equity and debt financing. The split related to the new $40 million was not disclosed. The equity portion was led by Northgate Capital, which was joined by existing and new investors, including Cometa, Dila Capital, AlleyCorp, Western Technology Investment, Alchimia Investments and a group of strategic individual investors. Quinio’s debt financing details were also not disclosed at this time. Big plans for the capital include continuing to acquire, operate and boost brands in Latin America. “We have learned a lot since our first acquisition and therefore feel better prepared to tackle new opportunities going forward,” Gavito added. “Our tech tools have allowed us to reduce employee non-strategic tasks time, have more accurate projections on revenue and costs, be smarter on catalog expansion and product development and optimize marketing return on investment.”