R2 announced it closed a $15M Series A round led by Gradient Ventures, Google’s AI-focused venture fund. Other participating funds were existing investors General Catalyst, 166 2nd, Magma Partners, and new investors Femsa Ventures and PayU.
87% of credit demand by small businesses in Latin America is unmet, and the startup’s goal is to change this reality through an embedded lending infrastructure. Thanks to R2, the platforms small businesses use to buy and sell every day can seamlessly offer capital to their business users. According to R2’s founders Roger Larach and Roger Teran:
“Our winning approach centers on enabling an end-to-end, white-labeled lending experience that is easily embedded via APIs onto a platform’s product offering.”
In the last 12 months, R2 has financed over 3,000 small businesses and grew its monthly revenue by 23X. The company also launched embedded lending partnerships with some of Latin America’s most iconic technology companies.
“With this round, we’ve never been more steadfast about our mission and confident in R2’s ability to scale its impact to millions of SMBs across Latin America — and beyond. (…) We plan to expand our capabilities by hiring the best and brightest in Engineering, Product, Data & Risk, Finance, Compliance, Partnerships, and more,” R2’s co-founders said.