DEUNA, a Mexico-based one-click checkout commerce startup, is formally becoming a member of Latin America’s practically $100 billion e-commerce sector with $30 million in Collection A funding after largely staying underneath the radar since being based in late 2020.
Co-founders Roberto Enrique Kafati Santos and Jose Maria Serrano began the corporate after a profession at McKinsey main digital funds for Kafati Santos and at supply firm JOKR for Serrano. In addition they just lately introduced on Jose Jorge Molina, who was beforehand chief advertising officer for Bitso, to hitch the founding workforce to guide advertising.
“Individuals had been in search of assist digitizing their companies, and as we began trying into this, realized that manufacturers wanted assist promoting on-line,” Kafati Santos advised DailyTech. “On the time, we didn’t perceive the chance to do an e-commerce platform, however the resolution was apparent, and we’ve accomplished funds ever since. We helped a number of manufacturers final yr and have now elevated our gross sales 5 instances.”
E-commerce is a scorching market in Latin America, with the founders estimating it can develop 30% annually. Nevertheless, they are saying the market continues to be suffering from three challenges: buyer acceptance, conversion and fraud.
That’s why they are saying they’re constructing a “Commerce 3.0” that can sort out all three of these. DEUNA gives a funds infrastructure that integrates with main fee suppliers and various fee strategies and gives retailers entry to greater than 3 million customers. As well as, retailers can use the instruments to deal with fee orchestration, fee processing, fraud prevention and lifecycle administration based mostly on actionable consumer real-time analytics.
Specifically, to fight acceptance, DEUNA will supply a number of fee strategies, which Kafati Santos believes may also assist remedy the issue of conversion, the place some 70% of consumers abandon their cart at checkout. The corporate has been capable of improve acceptance charges by 40% and show out about 3 times increased conversion charges, he mentioned.
In Latin America, that’s usually because of about half of consumers not having their fee technique of alternative accredited. On prime of that, these whose fee is accredited, one in 20 funds are fraudulent, for instance, a fee made with a stolen bank card, he added. That’s why DEUNA is constructing its personal fraud tech with customized guidelines for retailers that cuts down on fee fraud and denials.
With a moderately massive e-commerce market, a number of one-click rivals have entered, primarily pushed by the buyer shopping for habits shift that came about over the previous two years. We just lately noticed Glossy increase $1.7 million to get began in an area that’s dominated by corporations like Ownit, Bolt, Checkout.com, OurPass and Rapyd, which have collectively raised greater than $3 billion in investments throughout the previous 18 months. Throughout that point, Colombia-based Addi mentioned it was entering into the one-click area after taking in a $75 million extension to its Collection B.
Kafati Santos mentioned DEUNA has been capable of differentiate itself from lots of the gamers in that it’s fixing the entire acceptance-conversion-fraud triangle, whereas others are simply going after items of it.
Over the previous two years, Kafati Santos and Serrano had bootstrapped the enterprise for probably the most half, apart from a $7 million seed spherical in October 2021. They’ve grown income 120 instances within the final yr and introduced on shoppers, together with KFC, Pappos and Dunkin’ Donuts.
This new funding of $30 million was led by Activant Capital, with participation from Valor Capital, Summary Ventures, Acrew Capital, Add Ventures and a bunch of particular person founder buyers from corporations together with Plaid, Kavak, Jeeves, Xepelin, iFood and R2. The corporate raised a complete of $37 million.
The founders plan to make use of the brand new capital to develop its presence in Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador and Chile, product improvement, go-to-market, including staff to its workforce of 90 and getting into new nations, like Brazil, within the coming months.
David Yang, companion at Activant Capital, mentioned his agency has invested in plenty of fintech corporations and believes DEUNA is doing one thing distinctive.
“Elevating a $30M Collection A is difficult in any market, however with their backdrop, we had excessive conviction in what they’re doing,” Yang mentioned. “This can be a huge market alternative, in some methods extra compelling than the U.S. DEUNA’s method can be holistic moderately than simply items of the market. The workforce, and the imaginative and prescient they’d with Jose (Molina) becoming a member of, has had sturdy execution to this point.”