LatamList – Greensill Capital, a London-based fintech firm backed by General Atlantic and SoftBank, acquired Colombian-Chilean fintech OmniLatam to supercharge its expansion in Latin America. Founded by Diego Caicedo, Andres Abumohor, and Charlie A. Cliff Omni currently does business in Chile and Colombia and will expand to Brazil and Mexico with the acquisition. The two companies met for the first time six months ago and closed quickly. From Bloomberg:
“We realized Latin America requires very special skills, and yet at the same time the region has a very significant working-capital gap that we estimate to be on the order of $750 billion,” Greensill founder and Chief Executive Officer Lex Greensill said in an interview. “So we found a company, a team, a technology that is a perfect fit considering the values and the approach of the Greensill organization.”
Omni, founded in 2018 in Bogota, has provided about $300 million in digital working-capital products to small and midsize businesses that supply large companies in Chile and Colombia. The firm collects data such as invoices and tax forms to help make credit decisions based on the prospective borrower’s clients, sales, and employees.
“We don’t ask for the company’s financial statements, which will only tell you about the past,” Omni CEO Diego Caicedo said. “We’re seeing the movie in real-time here,” he said, adding that “small companies’ situations change very fast, and in a world in a pandemic crisis like today, it changes even faster.”
The acquisition will help Omni continue to help Latin American SMEs across the region and will help Greensill enter the Mexican and Brazilian markets. The terms of the acquisition were undisclosed.
OmniLatam previously won Magma Partners‘ fintech competition in 2016 and received a pre-seed investment, and had received follow on funding from Magma and Alpha4Ventures in subsequent rounds.
