Round led by Better Tomorrow Ventures (BTV) with participation from existing investor MAYA Capital, new investors Village Global, Clocktower Ventures, and others
SÃO PAULO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Divibank, the financing platform where LatAm businesses have access to growth capital via revenue-share financing, announced on May 12, 2021, it closed a $3.6M round of Seed funding led by Better Tomorrow Ventures (BTV) alongside other investors including MAYA Capital, Village Global, Clocktower Ventures, Magma Partners, Gilgamesh Ventures, Rally Cap Ventures, Alumni Ventures Group, Sebastian Mejia (Founder/President of Rappi), Tayo Oviosu (Founder/CEO of Paga, who participated via Kairos Angels), Karim Atiyeh (Founder/CTO of Ramp), Josh Abramowitz and Daniel Simon (founders of Bread).
Divibank will use the funds to accelerate its product roadmap and ramp up hiring. They are also developing value additive software for their clients. The software will help its clients better manage their digital ads campaigns and optimize their investment returns. The company is also working on a few additional financial products for its clients, targeting the $205B+ ecommerce and SaaS markets in Latin America with offerings such as inventory financing and recurring revenue securitizations.
“We are building the go-to-platform for entrepreneurs looking to scale their businesses. Divibank is changing the way entrepreneurs scale their online ventures by providing quick, affordable, and non-dilutive capital to startups and SMEs in Latin America. And as part of our smart-money proposition, we are also offering marketing analytics software for our clients to get more value out of the capital they receive,” said Jaime Taboada, co-founder and CEO of Divibank. “Traditional banks and financial institutions do not know how to evaluate internet businesses, so they generally do not offer loans to these companies. If they do, it is generally a long and tedious process at a very high cost. With our revenue-share offering, the entrepreneur does not have to pledge their home, drown in credit card debts or even give up their equity to invest in marketing and growth,” he added.
“Better Tomorrow Ventures realized that not only was Divibank a truly innovative company, it was at the right place at the right time ready to take advantage of the rise of ecommerce and digital ads. The pandemic has only accelerated things. Lots of companies are starting online, many are migrating from offline to online, and startups have recognized that venture capital is not the only alternative they have to grow their businesses. Divibank serves the needs of all of these clients,” said Jake Gibson, Founding Partner, Better Tomorrow Ventures.
“We have been building and investing in fintech companies for the past 12 years, and we’re excited to leverage our fintech expertise with Divibank’s best-in-class team, local expertise and vision,” Jake concluded.
Lara Lemann, Co-Founder & Managing Partner at MAYA Capital who led the fund’s investment this Seed round, says “Jaime and Rebecca continue to execute at an incredibly fast pace. We have been close to Divibank since the beginning because Jaime was an EiR [Entrepreneur-in-Residence] at MAYA, and we saw them navigate the start of the operations in March 2020, right at the beginning of the pandemic. They are a formidable duo, building a world-class team and organization in a rapidly expanding market.”
Adriana Saman at Clocktower Ventures said, “Divibank was our first seed investment in Latin America made with our first LatAm focused fund. We were impressed with what they accomplished in just 12 months. They’ve managed to grow a lending business with a lean structure while testing multiple growth strategies along the way.”
Divibank plans to use the funds to invest more aggressively in hiring top talent across the world. Specifically, it will invest more aggressively in engineering/tech, sales, marketing, credit risk, and operations. Today the team consists of 7 employees in Brazil, and that number will likely grow to 25+ in the coming 12 months.
Divibank milestones include (last 6 months):
- Acquired more than 50 clients
- Total loan issuance volume grew 7x
- Grew revenues by 5x
- Grew its employee base by 4x, adding industry veterans from leading fintechs and financial institutions in Brazil
“Our goal is to help entrepreneurs in Latin America by giving them the necessary resources they need to grow their businesses. We have ambitious plans, and we are looking forward to expanding our product offerings and services,” said Rebecca Fischer co-founder & CPO at Divibank. “This investment shows that we are on the right track and it is a vote of confidence in our mission to help SMEs and startups in the region,” she concluded.
“We are excited to have such great partners join us in this journey. Our new partners come with a lot of experience and have already added a lot of value. We will use the proceeds of this round to scale our go-to-market strategy, continue to improve our credit model, and make our customers’ lives easier with investments in technology,” ended Taboada.
About Better Tomorrow Ventures
Better Tomorrow Ventures (BTV) is a fintech-focused early-stage venture firm. The venture firm was founded in 2019 and based in San Francisco, California. It is focused on investing in early-stage fintech companies globally. The fund was started by ex-fintech entrepreneurs and experienced investors Sheel Mohnot and Jake Gibson. Jake is the co-Founder of NerdWallet, and Sheel was a GP of 500 Startups’ fintech fund, and founder of 2 successful fintech exits – a payments company and a high-stakes auction company.
About Divibank
Divibank is a data-driven financing platform where businesses have access to capital to finance their growth via revenue-share/non-dilutive financing. It is changing the way entrepreneurs scale their online businesses without dilution by providing quick and affordable capital to startups and SMEs in Latin America. As part of its smart-money proposition, the company also offers marketing analytics software for clients to get more value out of the capital they receive. Divibank is backed by Better Tomorrow Ventures, MAYA Capital, Village Global, Clocktower Ventures, Magma Partners, Rally Cap Ventures, Gilgamesh Ventures, Alumni Ventures Group and Kairos Angels among others. Learn more about Divi at https://divibank.co/en/.
Contacts
For more information on Divibank’s press coverage contact:
Renan Albers, Tel: +55(11)93355-9191
renan@divibank.co
