Heru, Leoparda, Bendo, Wolet, Among the Startups That Have Recently Raised Capital in LatAm

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Mexican fintech Heru, which bills itself as “the app for filing taxes,” raised US$6 million in a seed round led by Gradient Ventures, a Google fund focused on artificial intelligence. Heru first emerged as a platform aimed at Uber drivers, but today it is aimed at all types of independent workers who need help with managing their taxes. Founded by Colombians Mateo Jaramillo and Stiven Rodriguez, Heru was part of the Y Combinator accelerator in 2019. 

Leoparda Electric, a Sao Paulo startup dedicated to “battery swapping” for electric motorcycles, raised $8.5 million in a seed round co-led by Monashees and Construct Capital. Battery swapping involves exchanging the depleted battery for a charged one, an alternative to traditional electric battery recharging and a model promoted worldwide by startups such as Taiwan’s Gogoro. The Brazilian startup is in the development stage, and the capital will be used to launch in pilot mode in Brazil. 

In Colombia, Finaktiva, a fintech that provides loans digitally to companies “with high growth potential,” announced a round of US$5 million in equity and $20 million in debt. The equity came from the Swiss fund Responsability, and the debt mainly from Bancolombia. 

In a similar vein, the Peruvian fintech Wolet, dedicated to payments and credit infrastructure for SMEs, announced a US$2 million debt round led by Acorde, a private equity firm also from Peru. 

Bendo, a Mexican app that allows anyone to sell products without having to keep them in inventory as they go from the supplier’s warehouse directly to the customer, announced that it raised US$1.1 million in a pre-seed round led by the Brazilian fund Canary.