“To see things in the seed, that is genius”
— Lao Tzu
Having the ability to foresee a forthcoming of a start-up and essentially invest on it is one of the smartest decisions to make in this generation as a Venture Capital.
Over the past 5 years, there had been numerous Venture Capital Firms who invested and are based in Latin America. Here, we discuss 4 of these firms.
- Nazca
Nazca, founded in 2014, is a Venture Capital firm headquartered in Mexico City. The firm specializes in breakout and transforming technology-enabled businesses. Its commitment is to empower the best leaders that there are in Mexico and Latin America.
The firm offers multi-stage venture capital, a local and global network, market intelligence, insight and perspective on strategy formulation and deployment, legal and regulatory advice, talent sourcing, and access to business partnership agreements to entrepreneurs. The firm prefers to invest in Latin American companies that speak Spanish.
Nazca brings their region on a path to social and economic success by stabilizing the status quo between capital and talent.
To date, they have 86 investments including Sugo, Modak, Yuno & Vaas, and is actively seeking for new ones.
- Angel Ventures
Angel Ventures is one of Latin America's most active and influential Mexican venture capital firms. By becoming a leading Series Seed and Series A investor in startups that drive innovative business models tailored for the Latin American market, the Firm invests in early-stage to early-growth companies.
The firm seeks to invest in businesses that are involved in information and communications technology, media, health, biotechnology, retail, consumer goods, agribusiness, and fintech.
Angel Ventures manages two investment funds, one of which is in divestment period, and strives to make the best investments possible by attracting best-in-class entrepreneurs, employing extensive and innovative approaches to assess opportunities, and leveraging our intangible assets to boost portfolio returns, all while adhering to major global standards for VC practices.
They have a total of 183 investments and some of what makes up for it are Clip, a mobile sale point. Colektia, a digital debt collection company. And Plant Squad, a plant-based Mexican food producer.
- Dux Capital
Dux Capital is an early-stage VC Firm investing in US-based Latinx founders. Founded in 2017, Dux Capital is a venture capital firm based in Mexico City, Mexico. They provide funding to groups that have been historically underinvested, overlooked, and underrepresented.
In their 5 years, they currently have 17 investments and their recent investment is in Zubut, a same-day delivery for e-commerce, savings for restaurants and last mile delivery for enterprises.
- Softbank
Softbank - the Japan-based Venture Capital firm who has a vast portfolio in telecom and e-commerce multi-industry company.
As a fundamentally late-stage investor, SoftBank is not known for being able to spot opportunities ahead of other firms. But the Japanese firm’s strategy in Latin America had a prominent exception. They saw massive opportunity in the region a year or two before other investors.
Softbank launched a dedicated Latin America fund in March of 2019. From then on, the firm has invested $3.5 billion in the region, with the $5 billion vehicle supporting 48 companies. According to the firm, the fund's success and returns have "far surpassed" anticipations. This has stimulated SoftBank to increase its investments in the area.
The timing couldn't have been more ideal for the firm. Latin America had a few local early-stage VC firms and a few foreign players at the time. However, only a handful of firms engaged in traditional growth investing.
SoftBank's COO, Marcelo Claure, led the company's entry into the region. Claure, a native of Bolivia, recognized that Latin America has riches of entrepreneurial talent and is mature for technological disruption not long after SoftBank's Vision Fund began investing in emerging markets.
SoftBank has established itself as the leading investor in Latin American unicorns. According to PitchBook data, SoftBank has been associated in more than a third of LatAm VC deals by value since 2019, and has been a lead investor in 15% of them.
According to PitchBook data, more than 1,100 distinctive nondomestic investors completed a deal in the region in 2021, nearly doubling the number recorded in 2020. From then on, many of the region's top VC firms have begun to deploy record sums of capital.