The Venture Codex Logo

The Venture Codex

IDB Lab

1300 New York Ave NW, Washington, District of Columbia, 20005, United States

Overview

IDB Lab is the innovation laboratory of the Inter-American Development Bank Group (IDB) Group.

Total investments
10
Lead investments
3
Investments · 12mo
3
Active investors
3

Sector focus

  • Banking
  • Financial Services
  • Trading Platform
Visit website

Investment portfolio

  • aviva

    Participated · Series A · Jul 2026

    Aviva offers loans generally between $100 and $1,000 to individuals and small businesses, primarily serving informal-economy customers outside major metropolitan areas. Customers apply through videoconference bots at physical kiosks and applications are evaluated in minutes using AI models that analyze behavioral and identity signals. The company currently operates in more than 300 small and mid-sized cities across 23 Mexican states and reports over 300,000 completed kiosk application processes. Aviva’s product lineup includes a working-capital loan for microbusinesses and a point-of-sale consumer credit product deployed through kiosks inside retail stores. Founded in 2022 by Filiberto Castro, David Hernández, Amran Frey and Israel García, the company has raised $34 million in capital and more than $80 million in credit lines to date. Aviva aims to reach an addressable market of over 50 million adults with limited access to banking services and plans to use recent funding to expand locations, products and technology staff.

  • Sofía

    Participated · Equity · May 2026

    Founded in 2018, Sofía operates as an Institución de Seguros Especializada en Salud with reinsurance backing from RGA. The company offers a unified health offering that integrates prevention programs, routine care and medical coverage, supported by proprietary technology and a digital operating model. Sofía reports more than 1,300 companies on its platform, a renewal rate above 95% and an NPS of 75. Its provider network includes over 2,000 specialist doctors and more than 400 hospitals and clinics. Sofía is investing in expanded product development, enhanced clinical accompaniment and continued application of AI in areas from clinical orientation to policy management. The company aims to deepen its competitive advantage versus traditional insurers and scale its presence among employers across Mexico.

  • ISA Saúde

    Participated · Series B · Dec 2025

    ISA Saúde operates a digital platform that enables hospital-level services to be delivered in patients’ homes, replacing care that would traditionally occur in brick-and-mortar facilities. The company coordinates a network of more than 4,000 healthcare professionals and currently treats roughly 1,500 patients per day across 60 Brazilian cities. By integrating structural clinical data and artificial intelligence, ISA Saúde seeks to generate predictive insights and streamline the patient journey. With fresh capital, the company intends to triple the number of cities it serves and broaden its range of care lines. Its tech-enabled model positions it to capture growing demand for convenient, cost-effective healthcare in Brazil. The business is financed by venture investors and most recently secured a US$30 million Series B round to fuel geographic and product expansion.

  • Marco

    Participated · Series A · Mar 2024

    Marco is building an operating system for Latin American SME exporters engaged in cross-border trade, providing them with easier access to financing and operational support. The platform offers a suite of products including LLC creation, bookkeeping, banking, FX payouts, cargo insurance, and financing tools such as factoring and asset-based lending. Founded in 2020 by Jacob Shoihet and Peter D. Spradling, Marco is headquartered in Miami with additional offices in New York City and Montevideo, Uruguay. The company employs over 50 people across its offices. Marco has established itself as a key player in the trade finance sector serving historically underserved SMEs. It intends to use the funds from this round to further enhance its ESG efforts within the LatAm region. Marco provides a tech-enabled trade financing platform that acts as an operating system for SMEs engaged in trade across LatAm and the U.S. The company was founded in 2020 by Peter D. Spradling (COO) and Jacob Shoihet (CEO) and is based in Miami with offices in Montevideo and New York. Marco intends to use the funds to expand its trade finance platform and suite of trade services across target segments in the U.S. and Latin America, including Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru. The company reported rapid growth: it lent $100M last year, has financed over $254M with zero losses since inception, and saw 1,500%+ CAGR in funding between 2021 and 2022. Marco aims to fund $750M by the end of 2023. Marco Financial offers a tech-enabled risk assessment and factoring platform to provide working capital to small and medium exporters across Latin America. Its product underwrites lines of credit based on future potential and customer-provided data, shortening loan origination from over two months to about one week and enabling funding within 24 hours. Since launching its product in January 2020, Marco has processed thousands of invoices across 20 countries totaling more than $18 million and now lends as little as $25,000 per month up to $10 million. The company aims to simplify cross-border payments, improve risk assessment by productizing unstructured data, and enable large logistics providers to originate export financing. Marco was founded in 2019 and is based in Miami with offices in New York, Dallas and across Latin America. The company also announced senior hires including Prajwal Manalwar as chief product officer and named Sabrina Teichman chief growth officer (editor's note: as of September 2021, Sabrina Teichman no longer works for Marco Financial). Marco Financial is a tech-enabled financing platform that provides financing to small and medium-sized Latin American exporters selling to U.S. buyers. The company uses an innovative due diligence process that leverages real-time data to dynamically assess risk and mitigate capital loss. Marco intends to use the new capital to continue expanding operations and its business reach across the region. The company was founded in 2019 by Peter D. Spradling and Jacob Shoihet and is headquartered in Miami, FL, with offices in New York and across Latin America. The financing package includes both an equity component and a credit facility, indicating a mix of growth capital and lending capacity to support originations.

  • Slang

    Led · Equity · Jan 2022

    Slang offers an English-learning platform focused on professional and technical curricula tailored to specific job roles in eight industries, including financial services, consumer goods, logistics, education, technology & design, manufacturing, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals. Its modular, machine-learning-driven technology creates dynamic learning routes that are hyper-personalized to each user, department, or organization. The company targets youth, manual laborers, and other underserved populations who lack access to costly traditional English programs, thereby aiming to improve their employability and income potential. Slang is currently concentrated in the Latin America and Caribbean market and serves more than 70 institutional clients in countries such as Colombia, Chile, Uruguay, Peru, Mexico, and Brazil. The platform’s recent $1 million backing from IDB Lab will finance expansion into additional countries in the region and the rollout of low-cost, sector-specific courses for blue-collar workers. By leveraging artificial intelligence, Slang positions itself as a scalable, cost-effective alternative to traditional English instruction for the region’s large non-English-speaking workforce.

Team

  • Irene Arias Hofman, CFA

    CEO

    LinkedIn
  • Magdalena Coronel

    Chief investment officer

    LinkedIn
  • Mara Balestrini

    Digital Transformation and Experimentation Senior Consultant

    LinkedIn