Bogota – Investments in the financial technology sector The Colombian continues to evolve despite the stricter policies of private equity and venture capital funds to choose their bets, as they continue to focus on this segment made up of some 1,110 companies and 3,569 employees in the country.
According to the report Informe Técnico KPMG Colombia 2021during the last few years Fintechs have raised close to US$160 million, or 5.9% of all capital received by the Colombian ecosystem.
After the investment made by Sempli, Plurall, Tpaga and Mono, Colombian fintechs continue their momentum with Efintiuna tool for small and medium-sized enterprises to access digital financing options, which has just closed a US$1 million round.
Efinti receives $1 million for expansion
This investment round included the participation of companies such as Inversiones Andamas; certain angel investors; the CEO of Blumer, Ernesto Ruiz; one of the co-founders of Cobru, Franco Niebles and Acelera Latam.
We will open new markets in the coming months, starting with Mexico and expanding our solution to other Latin American countries,” Andrés Tóbon, CEO of Efinti, told Bloomberg Line.
This year, the company developed a predictive model based on artificial intelligence that helped it mitigate default risk, generating a gross transaction value equivalent to US$15 million.
In addition, the company has launched a DeFi protocol to continue its expansion in the United States and Mexico in 2023.
Andrés Tobón and Alejandra Gaviria, founders of Efinti.According to KPMG’s Colombia Tech Report 2021, in recent years fintechs have raised close to US$160 million, or 5.9% of all capital received by the Colombian ecosystem.
In mid-June, Colombian fintech Arco announced that it had raised $6 million from U.S. investment firm Tiger Global, which has also been behind capital injections from companies such as Brazilian neobank Nubank.
Mono said that these resources will be invested in technology and product development, with which they hope to provide better customer experiences as they consolidate in Colombia.
The company, founded by Salomón Zarruk (CEO), Sebastián Ortiz (CTO), José Tomás Lobo (COO) and Juan Camilo Poveda (CPO), also has people from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela.
The company recently went through Y Combinator, the most famous business accelerator in the world, and there it advanced in its project, which it defines as a bank account for startup Columbia.
Earlier this year Sencilloque develops financial products for small businesses, announced that it closed a new round led by CAF and Comfama, thus achieving an investment of $42 million since 2017.
Additionally, in February, Colombian mobile wallet Paga announced it had raised US$10 million in a Series A for expansion after going through accelerator Y Combinator and reaching one million users, the company’s CEO Andres Gutierrez told Bloomberg Line.
And in March last year, the Colombian fintech was funding plural raised $1.5 million in its pre-seed round and raised $10 million in debt from an undisclosed London-based fund.
Glenn Goldman, the company’s co-founder and CSO, noted at the time that “this may be the first time” in the regional fintech ecosystem that “a startup is able to raise international institutional debt to originate its first loans.”
“The typical route is to use expensive capital during the first year or two before being able to access an institutional line of credit,” he said.