LatAm List – Venture capital investment in Latin America reached $4.6B in 2019, more than double the $1.9B in 2018, a report from LAVCA reveals.
Investment in Latin America has steadily grown since 2011 and experienced exponential growth in the past four years increasing from $500M in 2016 to $4.6B in 2019. Many attribute the huge surge in 2011 to support from SoftBank’s $500B Innovation Fund. VC firms such as Kaszek Ventures and Canary have also been raising large sums of money to invest in the region.
The LAVCA report revealed that 37% of investments were made by co-investors involving at least one Latin American and one global investor, indicating significant cross-border involvement.
“This signals global cooperation to support startups with significant traction with growth Capital that was not historically available,” explained Julie Ruvolo, Director of Venture Capital at LAVCA.
The fintech sector attracted the most investment at 31%, followed by Logistics and Distribution at 26% and proptechs at 9%. Brazil and Mexico were the largest markets in 2019, receiving 50.5% and 22.7% of the total investment respectively, followed by Chile, Colombia, Argentina, and Peru.
“While 2019 seems far, far behind us, the record-setting year shows an international VC industry finally recognizing the huge untapped tech opportunity in Latin America as well as the amazing entrepreneurial talent building world-class startups,” said Federico Antoni, co-founder of the Mexican VC firm ALLVP.
Some of 2019 largest investments include $300M for Gympass, $231M for Brazilian fintech Creditas, and $150M for Argentine neobank Ualá.
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