The Chilean startup dedicated to financing services for SMEs in Latin America, has just closed a Series A investment round of US $ 230 million, the highest amount of a company of this type in this financing stage. The round was led by Kaszek Ventures (the same ones from companies like NotCo) and is divided into US $ 30 million in capital and US $ 200 million in credit lines.
In addition, other investors such as DST Global, Chilean venture capital Kayyak Ventures and angel investors participated. With this, at two years of life, Xepelin “has raised more than US $ 286 million between capital and asset-backed facilities,” according to a statement from the company.
Xepelin was founded by Chileans Sebastián Kreis and Nicolás de Camino and currently has operations in Mexico (where Kreis lives) and in Chile, where De Camino is located. They grow 30% per month and already have close to 100 employees and 4,000 clients. “In Latin America, less than 5% of the SMEs in each country have access to financial services and recurring financing.
These, in addition to being manuals, are not focused on the client or on solving his pain, but on the opportunity to extract liquidity from him. Xepelin’s mission is to change this forever, ”says Kreis. In this way, Xepelin is based on a SaaS (Software as a Service) model designed to provide SMEs with a way to organize their financial information in real time.
“With just three clicks they can receive the capital in a matter of hours,” says Kreis. They have also developed an underwriting engine powered by Artificial Intelligence, which executives say gives them the ability to make loan approval decisions online. The CEO of this startup adds: “We are dedicated to solving the daily financial pain of SMEs. The circle is virtuous: SMEs use Xepelin and improve their financial habits, obtaining more efficient financing, paying their obligations and collaborating effectively with clients and suppliers, generating relevant impacts in their industries ”.
Although they did not want to refer to what their valuation would be after this round, one of their great goals is to provide financial services to more than a million SMEs by 2025. “In January of this year we opened Mexico and the growth has been impressive . At least three or four times what Chile was at the beginning. There we still have a lot to grow ”, says Nicolás de Camino.
