Tag: movile

Carlos Moyses: How iFood Delivers 11M Monthly Orders & Is Just Getting Started Ep 61

With the recent acquisition of Cornershop, Rappi’s $200M round and Uber Eats continued expansion, Latin America’s last mile delivery market has heated up. In November, Movile’s iFood blew it out of the water by raising another $400M to continue to expand the business. In the past 10 years, over 50% of the region connected to the Internet, creating a booming market for e-commerce and other online businesses. The growth of food delivery startups, especially in Latin America’s biggest markets, has been propelled by this trend. The Brazilian market leader is iFood, with over 6 million users, 1000 employees, and 10,000 independent delivery drivers.

In this episode of Crossing Borders, I sat down with iFood CEO, Carlos Moyses, to talk to him about the delivery market opportunity, iFood’s growth through acquisitions in the early 2010s, building culture across borders, and Carlos’ personal story from finance to startups. Check out this episode to learn why some of the biggest players in Brazil’s startup ecosystem have backed this food delivery business.

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How MercadoLibre Dominates Latin America’s E-commerce Industry

Over the past five years, Amazon has slowly expanded into Latin America, testing the waters in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Mexico.

Despite the Seattle-based giant’s explosive success in the United States, Amazon has not yet made inroads as quickly in most of Latin America.

Part of the challenge is that Latin America already has its own e-commerce giant: MercadoLibre.

Founded in 1999 by Hernan Kazah and Marcos Galperin in Buenos Aires, Argentina, MercadoLibre is now the e-commerce site of choice in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Peru, Panama, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

In Latin America, 47% of online shoppers buy on MercadoLibre while only 17% use Amazon. In Mexico, where Amazon offers similar services to the US, 38% of online shoppers still use MercadoLibre while just 21% use Amazon.

Source

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8 Tips From Latin American Startup Investors

As an VC investing in both the US and Latin America, I get to see how investors look at the world differently around the world. I gathered the top advice from Latin American venture capitalists on starting a company, fundraising, and how to keep moving forward that can be applied anywhere in the world.

Move faster and believe in yourself

“Move forward and do it faster than others.” – Rocio Fonseca, Executive Director, Start-Up Chile, Chile

Fonseca started and sold a microbiology company in Chile before running Start-Up Chile, the Chilean Government back incubator. Fonseca stresses that women especially need to trust in themselves when moving forward with their businesses. She thinks that if women are given access to education, coaching, and other female role models, countries can change their viewpoint on women’s empowerment.

Focus is Crucial

“It’s impossible to do everything at one time.“ – Sebastian Vidal, Executive Director, Parallel 18, Puerto Rico

Vidal has met many founders who lack focus. They’re all over the place, trying to launch in different markets, at the same time perform R&D. They don’t realize how fast money goes unless they focus on one specific thing. If a founder is distracted from the company’s primary mission, they lose traction, and waste money, leading to failure.

Be Frank about What You Don’t Know

“It’s really about listening and observing. “ – Amanda Jacobson, Sub Director, Fiinlab, Mexico

Everyone starts out somewhere, Jacobson observes. She started out asking a lot of questions, observing, listening, and asking questions to fully herself immerse in her position at Village Capital. People love to talk about what they know, she realized, which allowed her to build great connections that served her long-term. (more…)

Ep 37 Fabricio Bloisi, Movile Has a Plan To Make Life better For 1 Billion People

Movile is a global leader in mobile marketplaces with a dream to make life better for 1 billion people through marketplaces on their mobile devices. Movile is a remarkable story of innovation from Latin America, driven by people who are willing to take risks to learn and grow quickly.

I sat down with the CEO and founder of Movile, Fabricio Bloisi, to talk about why he started Movile and how he and his team grew it to the largest mobile company in Brazil and Latin America.

Movile focused on innovating and exploring advanced technologies

In its early stage, Movile focused on text messages (SMS) and then enabled ringtone commerce in Brazil, as well as the development of the country’s first Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) search portal. In 2007, Bloisi focused on expansion. In 2008, and Movile built itself into the largest company in the Latin American mobile commerce industry through new products and mergers and acquisitions, establishing a presence in over ten countries with offices in Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico.

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