:quality(75)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/bloomberglinea/ZOO7C6P27JDQPB3OHZVFGPYPBM.jpg "Early-stage Latin startups remain attractive to hedge funds and angel investors.")
Bloomberg Línea — Data from CB Insights reveals that overall the number of new unicorns to emerge so far this year has plummeted compared to the same period of last year, with 18 unicorns emerging globally in third quarter, compared to 136 during the same quarter of last year.
Meanwhile, series C rounds onwards saw a significant downward adjustment in the first half of this year compared to the same period last year, according to data from the Association for Private Equity Investment in Latin America (LAVCA).
:quality(75)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/bloomberglinea/5GVWCVWDSRBQPIQYKS5DVXN3NQ.jpg "Mobile Banking Startup Majority, Serving Immigrants in US, Closes $37.5M Series B")
Even so, equity rounds for Seed and early-stage startups remained strong in Latin America in the first six months of 2022, with 113% and 48% year-on-year growth, respectively, according to LAVCA data.
Following are the startups in the region that picked up funds this week:
Vidia
Brazilian healthtech Vidia raised 9 million reais ($1.7 million) in a seed round led by Caravela Capital, with participation from K50, Preface Ventures, Niu Ventures, Verve Capital, Aimóres Investimentos and Head & Heart.
The company had already received a pre-seed of 4 million reais from Canary and angel investors such as Patrick Sigrist, cofounder of iFood.
Thiago Bonini, cofounder,and CEO of Vidia has an investor background, having been the M&A leader for Latin America for South Africa’s Naspers, owner of Prosus, which today owns Movile and iFood, and which placed him on Movile’s board of directors.
Bonini launched Vidia in 2021 as a platform that brokers elective surgeries for people who do not have health insurance at hospitals with available capacity.
With this, the company says it makes surgeries 40% cheaper on average than when paid directly to the hospital. For its partner private hospitals, Vidia said it generated 3 million reais in revenue.
:quality(75)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/bloomberglinea/5EEUCIPTJVA7HEDEVM7J7V5COY.jpg "Wall Street Firms Boost Lending to Latin America Startups")
Carvuk
Founded in April 2022, Chilean startup Carvuk raised $615,000 from angel investors Jaime Arrieta of BUK and Ian Lee of Examedi. The seed round also featured an undisclosed regional fund.
The platform created by Nicolas Vega, José Alcalde, and Diego Noguera allows car owners to take care of their maintenance, insurance, inspection, crash repair and washes through an app.
Carvuk has a network of more than 40 suppliers in the automotive sector, including the official workshops of car markers, and a series of drivers who take care of each of the transfers under a gig-worker model. The platform has a monthly subscription model through which it allows its clients to have their vehicles fully managed by a specialist.
DolarApp
A startup for virtual assets and financial services DolarApp received an initial round of $5 million led by the Kaszek fund and the accelerator Y Combinator, in which angel investors also participated.
Founded in the United States and with a subsidiary in Mexico, DolarApp seeks to solve the need to bank in dollars in countries where international financing is difficult to obtain.
Its founders Zach Garman, Alvaro Correa and Fernando Terrés are striving to help Latin Americans, starting with Mexico, to globalize their finances with USDC, a dollar-linked cryptocurrency issued by Circle, a company backed by Goldman Sachs.
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