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Highgate Private Equity

260 E Brown St Ste 280, Birmingham, MI, 48009, United States

Overview

Highgate is a United States-based real estate investment and hospitality management firm.

Total investments
1
Lead investments
0
Investments · 12mo
0
Active investors
3

Sector focus

  • Hospitality
Visit website

Investment portfolio

  • ProducePay

    Participated · Series D · Feb 2024

    ProducePay offers a combination of supply-chain monitoring tools and financing products to help fresh produce growers and distributors manage volatility and reduce waste. The company supplies working capital for operating expenses, tech upgrades and land acquisitions, and extends post-harvest liquidity to improve growers' cash positions. ProducePay also bundles financial products with supply-chain visibility and agronomy support through “predictable commerce programs” that lock in pricing and volume before the growing season. Its platform connects growers and buyers across a network of roughly 1,000 clients and covers more than 60 commodities across 20 countries. Financial traction includes having funded more than $4.5 billion in harvests, revenue growth of 76% year over year (compared to 2022), trade volume up nearly 3x and transaction volume on track to reach $2 billion by late 2023. The company employs about 300 full-time staff and plans to expand into Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. ProducePay provides a product suite for the fresh produce industry that includes grower financing, market pricing data and analytics, and a marketplace connecting growers, distributors, and suppliers. Its financing products cover every stage of the harvest cycle with flexible payment terms, funding in two weeks or less, and no obligation to pay until produce ships. The company’s Insights and InsightsPro platforms are used by more than 10,000 growers and distributors for real-time pricing data and analytics, and its marketplace includes over 700 vetted growers and distributors. ProducePay has financed $3 billion of produce across 12 countries in North and South America. Founded in 2014 by CEO Pablo Borquez Schwarzbeck and based in Los Angeles, the company plans to use new capital to invest in technology development and infrastructure, grow its direct sales team, and expand further throughout Latin America. ProducePay offers farmers cash advances throughout the growing season and buys produce ahead of delivery, positioning itself as an intermediary between distributors, growers and grocers. The company operates a centralized marketplace that launched in October and bundles pricing and payment certainty for growers with better pricing for supplies and services such as seed, equipment and logistics. Since its 2015 launch the marketplace has seen $1.5 billion worth of produce flow across it, with $750 million of those transactions occurring in the last year. The marketplace has already seen $100 million in purchases since its October debut. ProducePay is based in Los Angeles and is led by founder and CEO Pablo Borquez Schwarzbeck. The company plans to use new financing to expand its purchasing model and marketplace to empower more farmers and distributors. ProducePay supplies fresh-produce farmers and distributors with short-term financing, online trading tools and market data to increase cash flow and transparency in the supply chain. The company created a way to securitize perishable produce as a financial asset using technology. It provides immediate access to financing for growers and distributors in the United States, Mexico, Canada, Honduras and Chile. ProducePay financed $400M of produce in 2017 (up from $17M in 2015) and has financed over $850M of produce in under four years, providing liquidity to more than 600 growers and distributors across six countries. The company has launched online trading and data-insight tools to streamline sales, discovery and real-time pricing. ProducePay was founded in 2015 and is based in Los Angeles. The Series B will be used to scale its financing business and to develop its software platform. ProducePay is a Los Angeles-based fintech that helps farmers better manage cash flow. It offers next-day advances on produce when shipments go to suppliers, provides pre-season advances, and operates its own market for distributors. The company’s product suite centers on cash-flow advances tied to produce shipments and a marketplace for distributors. ProducePay raised $77M in funding split between $7M in equity and $70M in debt. The funding was led by CoVenture with participation from Menlo Ventures, Arena Ventures, Red Bear Angels, Social Leverage, and Moonshots Capital. ProducePay is led by Pablo Borquez Schwarzbeck; the source of the debt funding was not announced.

Team

  • Arash Azarbarzin

    CEO

    LinkedIn
  • Mehdi Khimji

    Founder

  • Joao Santos

    Regional Director of Marketing and Communications=

    LinkedIn