Led · Debt Financing · Jul 2020

Founded in July 2019 and based in Mexico City, Flat.mx started with an Opendoor‑style model of buying properties, renovating them and then reselling them. To operate in Mexico it has built an instant‑offer iBuyer and a suite of supporting products — a proprietary MLS, a contractor marketplace, financial products, broker technology and a home maintenance service — aiming to be a one‑stop real estate platform. Its certified remodeled properties undergo a 200+ point inspection and a full legal review. The company reports sales growing 70% quarter‑over‑quarter, inventory expanded 10x over the last year, and headcount nearly tripled from ~30 to over 85; it has completed thousands of home valuations and more than 100 transactions. Flat.mx says its low‑touch digital solution proved resilient during the pandemic and plans to use new capital to deepen its iBuying presence in Mexico, invest in data and financial products, and continue building the broader super‑app ecosystem. Flat.mx operates an iBuying platform in Mexico that purchases homes directly from owners, renovates them, and resells them to shorten time on market from months to weeks. The company offers a 30-day buyback warranty, completes turnarounds in about two months, and is forming partnerships with mortgage brokers to help buyers secure mortgages quickly. Flat.mx is currently purchasing homes in roughly 50 neighborhoods around Mexico City and has built a team of about 30 people. The startup says the typical home costs about $150,000 and characterizes the business as very capital-intensive, which informed its decision to raise debt to scale purchasing capacity. Founders Victor Noguera and Bernardo Cordero, who met at UC Berkeley, plan to expand into other Mexican cities within the next year. Long term, the company aims to become a broader marketplace—"the Amazon of real estate"—with iBuying as a stepping stone. Flat operates an i-buying style marketplace that visits homes, documents features and measurements, determines a price, manages renovations and handles ownership transfers so sellers are paid within 72 hours. The company targets Mexico’s residential market and estimates a total addressable market of 40 million homes valued at $1.6 trillion, with roughly $25 billion in homes sold per year. Flat says it addresses information gaps in Mexican real estate pricing (no centralized database like Zillow) and the slow, notarized ownership-transfer process that can take up to eight months. Co-founders Victor Noguera and Bernardo Cordero met at the University of California, Berkeley and launched the business to adapt the Opendoor model to Mexico. Rather than expand immediately across Latin America, Flat plans to grow by expanding its product into other property-management verticals within Mexico. The company raised a notable pre-seed to fund these plans.

Participated · Seed · Sep 2019

Klar is a Mexico City–based digital financial services platform launched in 2019 that aims to democratize access to credit in Mexico. Its consumer products include a cashback credit card, mobile payments, buy‑now‑pay‑later services, salary advances and adjustable credit lines. Klar leverages data analytics to customize credit lines, accounts and products for customers. The company says it has experienced exponential growth and now provides millions of Mexicans with accessible credit lines and financial products. Klar and its affiliates work closely with Mexican financial regulators to ensure products are secure and accessible, and the company notes it is a commercial entity not supervised by the CNBV. To support product expansion, Klar has secured external financing to extend its credit offerings. Klar is a 100% digital financial-services platform founded in 2019 that provides spending and borrowing products—including credit, mobile payments, rewards, personal loans, salary advances and buy‑now‑pay‑later—to Mexican consumers. The company offers features such as a Klar Card with cashback, a free-fee overdraft up to 1,000 pesos, credit lines up to 20,000 pesos, and Mastercard-powered security. Klar says 40% of its customers access digital financial products for the first time, and it has an NPS of 80. Over the past 12 months Klar added 1.4M customers while reporting a 7x revenue increase and a 4x increase in transaction volume year-over-year. The platform emphasizes proprietary data science and customer service to reduce bureaucracy and expand access in a market where large portions of the population lack formal credit or banking. Klar plans to continue enhancing its product suite, pursue strategic acquisitions, expand distribution channels, and invest in its team. Klar is a mobile-first digital financial services platform that provides fee-free accounts, cashback, a free overdraft and consumer credit products. The company offers features such as online account opening in minutes, cashback on purchases, a fee-free overdraft up to 1,000 pesos, and credit lines up to 10,000 pesos without referencing users’ credit bureau scores; the platform is powered by Mastercard. Klar aims to become the primary financial services platform for its users and plans to broaden access to consumer credit through product and proprietary technology expansion. Founded in 2019, Klar has opened more than 700,000 accounts to date and reported transactions on the platform increased by 60% each month in 2021; today 100% of users have access to its fee-free overdraft and more than a third use its lending product. The company has raised more than USD $27.5 million since inception, including a $15 million Series A last year led by Prosus Ventures. Klar’s products are offered through subsidiaries including Klar (which operates the Klar Credit Card) and Merci Pay, which is pursuing authorization under the Mexican Fintech Law. Klar is a 100% digital challenger bank in Mexico that offers free, transparent debit and credit products through a mobile app. Its core product set includes instant account opening, cashback on debit (1–4%), real‑time visibility and control of funds, and credit assessed from account history rather than traditional bureaus. The company has issued over 25,000 credit lines to roughly 200,000 customers in under 12 months and reported growth tripling during the COVID‑19 pandemic. Klar highlights security and partnerships with Mastercard and Banco de Mexico and aims to serve under‑ and un‑served segments of Mexico’s growing middle class. The Series A funds will be used to grow engineering teams in both its Berlin and Mexico hubs and to expand the product suite for simple, transparent liquidity and credit products. Founded in 2019, Klar emphasizes low‑cost technology to offer premium products to customers excluded by legacy banks. Klar provides banking services via a mobile app that links consumer cards, shows deposits and expenses, enables instant money transfers and real-time payments, and charges no minimum balance or transfer fees. The company rewards consumers with cash rather than points. Klar is powered by Mastercard and operates in compliance with Banco de Mexico regulations. It has an international team of about 30 people with offices in Mexico and Berlin. Klar intends to use the newly raised capital to launch its product in Mexico and to reach 100,000 new users in 2020. Financially, the company completed both equity and debt financings in the reported raise.

Participated · Series A · Jul 2019

Aspire is a Singapore-based B2B fintech firm. According to filings with the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA), Aspire secured a $79.15-million investment. The funding was provided by its US holding company, per the filings. The article does not disclose the instrument type, valuation, use of proceeds, or operating metrics. No additional product details or future plans were reported in the article. Aspire, founded in 2018, provides a finance operating stack for SMEs including working capital loans, bank accounts for cross-border businesses, corporate cards, payables and receivables management, and automated invoice processing. The platform integrates with accounting software such as Xero, QuickBook, NetSuite, Accurate and Jurnal. Co-founder and CEO Andrea Baronchelli says Aspire focuses on new-age businesses across sectors from single-director firms to companies with 500+ employees. Over the past 12 months Aspire tripled its annualized total payment volumes to $12 billion and now serves over 15,000 businesses in Southeast Asia. Most customers use Aspire for payment accounts, multi-currency management, and payables/receivables workflows. The company plans to use its latest funding on product development, regional expansion, and growing its team. Aspire, founded in 2018, offers a multiproduct financial stack for SMEs that includes bank accounts, corporate cards, automated invoice processing and connected financial management software, plus an incorporation service called Aspire Kickstart. It began by providing working capital loans and still offers credit lines and cards typically starting around $50,000 and up to $300,000, scalable as customers grow. More than 10,000 business accounts have been opened on Aspire, and those accounts transact roughly $2 billion annually, a volume that doubled in five months from May. Aspire is building out payroll functionality for multi-country employees and adding invoice-reconciliation features to deepen its product suite. The company aims to replace the typical seven providers SMEs use for banking, FX, invoicing, payroll and accounting by becoming a one-stop financial operating system. Aspire operates a neo-banking-like platform centered on AspireAccount, which provides merchants and startups instant credit limits for daily business expenses (up to about $70,000), B2B acceptance and cash-flow management tools. Applications are submitted via a mobile app and reviewed by a proprietary risk-assessment engine before final human approval. The company opens about 1,000 business accounts each month, has seen 30% month-over-month growth since its January 2018 founding, and expects to exceed 100,000 business accounts by next year. Aspire currently operates in Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam and will use new capital to scale across those markets. It is building a marketplace banking infrastructure to integrate third-party financial services and is developing a business credit card linked to each business account, planned for release as early as this year. Co-founder and CEO Andrea Baronchelli, formerly CMO at Lazada, says the product targets SMEs underserved by traditional banks. Aspire is a Southeast Asia-focused online lending platform headquartered in Singapore. The company operates an online lending service across the region. Aspire raised a $9 million seed round, according to the article. Singapore-based Insignia Ventures Partners participated in the round. Insignia was founded by ex-Sequoia Asia partner Yinglan Tan. The article does not disclose other investors, the use of proceeds, operating metrics, or future plans.