Led · Series C · Dec 2023

Yalo is a conversational commerce platform based in Mexico and described as Latin America-focused that uses AI to enable personalized interactions on messaging channels like WhatsApp. Its platform helps clients improve customer relations and boost revenue through intelligent, AI-driven marketing interactions across multiple channels. Yalo leverages AI to create highly personalized marketing interactions and counts clients including Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Mondelez, Coppel, Banco Azteca, and GPA. In December 2023 the company secured a $20.0M Series C extension led by Glisco Partners. The funding follows an alliance with Glisco Partners and will be used to continue building products that leverage AI. The articles do not disclose other operating metrics such as revenue or user counts. Yalo builds a suite of conversational-commerce tools that let brands plan and run marketing and sales campaigns, offer help-desk services, take payments, and create micro apps inside messaging platforms. The platform is platform-agnostic but relies heavily on WhatsApp, with SMS as its second-largest channel. Yalo counts enterprise customers including Unilever, Nestle, Coca-Cola and Walmart and says those relationships represent a potential audience of 350 million people (it does not disclose active user counts). The company recently rebranded from Yalochat and is active in Mexico, India, Brazil and the U.S., while emphasizing expansion in emerging markets like Latin America and Southeast Asia. Management plans to accelerate product development to deliver conversational marketing, payments, and a no-code builder for conversational apps. Financially, Yalo has been raising rapidly during COVID-driven e-commerce growth and has raised $75 million to date.

Led · Series C · Dec 2023

Yalo builds conversational commerce and customer-engagement tools that let businesses automate customer service, sales, collections and billing through WhatsApp. The company focuses on enabling companies in Latin America to use WhatsApp as a primary digital channel for consumer interactions. With the new $50 million financing led by B Capital, Yalo intends to accelerate development of AI-driven features for its platform. The announcement emphasizes growth of the company’s AI capabilities and commercial offerings; no revenues, user counts, or valuation were disclosed in the report.

Participated · Equity · Dec 2021

Kueski offers BNPL (Kueski Pay), personal loans (Kueski Cash) and interest-free earned wage advances (Kueski Up), using AI and machine learning on contextual and behavioral data to underwrite customers. The company says its dataset of six million unique applicants creates a data network effect to better predict repayment ability. Kueski declined to disclose hard revenue figures but the CEO expects the business will soon achieve $100M+ in ARR and reports strong recent product growth (Kueski Pay saw 210x GMV growth Nov 2020–Nov 2021; Cash grew 320% in the same period). Since 2012 Kueski has granted nearly 5 million loans online and has grown headcount to nearly 500 employees, planning to reach almost 1,000 by end of 2022. The firm has integrated thousands of merchants (including Walmart, Steve Madden and Sally Beauty) and plans to launch BNPL in brick-and-mortar stores and consumer apps on Google Play and the Apple App Store. Kueski says it will use the new capital to expand its BNPL footprint in Mexico, build new products for Mexican consumers and eventually expand to other Latin American countries. Kueski is an online lending company that offers real-time micro loans to Mexican consumers, using big data and machine learning to build credit-risk models and approve or reject applications in seconds. The company positions itself as the leading online lender for Mexico’s middle class and reports 7X+ annual growth since launch. Kueski says it has achieved better loss rates than a traditional credit card in Mexico. The firm plans to use new capital to accelerate portfolio growth, expand its team, and extend its brand presence throughout the region. Kueski was founded in 2012 and applies analytics to users’ credit history and digital footprint to underwrite loans.