Tech-powered SME lender Cora has bagged $10m to support its growth.
Kaszek Ventures, the venture capital firm, led the round, which also saw participation from investor Ribbit Capital that recently supported Razorpay’s $75m Series C round.
“We created Cora to pursue our life purpose, which is to solve the financial problems faced by small and medium businesses,” said Igor Senra, CEO and co-founder of Cora. “These businesses produce 67% of the Brazilian GDP but are totally underserved by the traditional banks.”
The enterprise is currently in closed beta and plans to launch its first product in the first six months of 2020, according to TechCrunch. The first product is expected to be a free SME-only mobile account.
“So far, large financial institutions have mainly built products that focus either on individuals or on large corporate clients and have totally ignored small and medium sized enterprises, who are the most relevant creators of value in our economies,” said Leo Mendes, the other co-founder. “We want to offer a high-quality, customer-centric suite of financial products that address the specific underserved needs of our clients’ businesses.”
The news comes as the FinTech evolution in Latin America is picking up speed. FinTech companies in the region have attracted over $3.7bn since 2014.
And its growing, cloud-based lender Migo announced the other day that it had raised $20m to expand into Brazil and Rebel, a digital lender, secured $10m in the beginning of December to build new products in the nation.
Kaszek Ventures is also looking to invest in more Latin American startups, having secured $600m across two new funds in August just for that purpose.
Copyright © 2019 FinTech Global
