Emerging Markets Roundup: September 27 - October 3 2023

Hi everyone, I’m Gautam. Every week I write the Spice Route newsletter, profiling tech in the five fastest growing regions in the world - India, SE Asia, MENA, Sub Saharan Africa and Latin America.

I’ve spent years immersed in these startup ecosystems as a founder and VC. If you’re a founder or PM building for these markets, a VC looking to invest where the growth is, or you want to stop falling behind on what’s happening in the rest of the world, this newsletter is for you.

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In Today’s Newsletter

🇮🇳 Finding suppliers, new markets, and going offline; 3 companies get funding this week to solve different problems in India’s e-commerce stack. Fairdeal helps D2C brands find offline retailers for their products; Vyapaar Vistaar helps FMCG businesses access rural India; and MyMandi helps the country’s ubiquitous cart-pushing grocers find produce and deliver them to customers. India’s e-commerce market is expected to surpass the US by 2034.

🇲🇾 95% less water, land, and fuel; Malaysia’s BoomGrow raises funding to bring mechanized indoor farming to the region. The company uses modular, stackable, shipping containers to grow produce all year round, allowing them to serve cities and remote areas. Like most other indoor farming companies, BoomGrow is starting with green, leafy vegetables as its first product. SE Asia’s mini green revolution rolls on.

🇧🇷 Brazil has always been an innovator in the mobility space; the country gave us the world’s first bus rapid transit system. The funding climate reflects this; the last 4 weeks have seen 4 companies raise $60M+. This week, Gringo, a super app for the country’s 75M drivers to help them with licensing, documentation, insurance, and loans, raises $29M in funding. The company plans to leverage its data to help users buy and sell used cars next.

🇿🇦 A bumper week for payments in South Africa; 3 companies raise $60M+ in funding. Peach Payments is a pan-African payments gateway, while Stitch offers an enterprise-grade API to optimize and scale payments solutions. Revio helps companies reduce failed payments and the resultant customer churn. The payments opportunity in Africa has barely scratched the surface, and “Africa Stack” initiatives such as PAPPS are just the beginning.

🇪🇬 🇸🇦 Local problems require local solutions. Intella began as a real-time market research solution, and is now leveraging its data to develop end-to-end AI models tailored to the region. The company’s first product is a voice-to-text transcription service for over 25 Arab dialects trained on over 30,000 hours of audio. The model outperformed Google, Open AI and Meta’s speech-to-text solutions for Arabic, which led to the company’s $3.4M fundraise.

Wins

Companies in my portfolio that won this week!

🇮🇳 Supersourcing, an Indian staff augmentation marketplace for companies hiring remote developers, came in at #9 on LinkedIn’s Top 20 Indian Startups for 2023.

Who’s Getting Funded

Local companies building for local markets.

We’re going to see the emergence of regional unicorns in sectors from fintech to agtech, driven by knowledge of local idiosyncrasies or protected by local regulation.

Agtech

🇲🇾 BoomGrow, a Malaysian agtech building machine enabled indoor farms to grow crops sustainably, has raised an undisclosed amount of Pre-Series A funding from Gobi Partners.

Cleantech

🇸🇬 🇦🇺 🇴🇲 Intercontinental Energy, a Singapore, Australia and Middle East based company developing green hydrogen projects, has raised $115M in Series B funding from GIC and Hy24.

🇮🇳 Oorja, an Indian physics-based modeling platform for complex engineering problems in the energy sector, has raised $1.5M in Pre Series A funding led by Micelio Fund.

Consumer, Community and Sports

🇮🇳 Flow Sports Life, an Indian tech enabled coaching facility for badminton and football, has raised an undisclosed amount of Seed funding led by Inflection Point Ventures.

E-Commerce and E-Commerce Enablement

🇮🇳 Fairdeal, an Indian data driven retail distribution network for direct-to-consumer brands, has raised $2M in funding led by WaterBridge Ventures.

🇮🇳 MyMandi, an Indian B2B marketplace that helps cart-pushing tiny retailers with suppliers and value-add services, has raised ~$1.2M in CCD funding led by Real Time Angel Fund.

🇮🇳 Vyapaar Vistaar, an Indian supply chain distribution platform helping FMCG businesses access rural villages and towns in the country, has raised an undisclosed amount of pre Series A funding from angel investors.

Fintech 

🇲🇽 Albo, a Mexican all-in-one financial management platform for consumers and businesses, has raised $40M in Series C funding from Nazca and other investors.

🇿🇦 Peach Payments, a South African enterprise grade digital payment service provider, has raised $30M in funding led by Apis Partners.

🇿🇦 Stitch, a South African end to end payments gateway and API for enterprises, has raised $25M in Series A Extension funding led by Ribbit Capital.

🇧🇷 Drip, a Brazilian fintech platform allowing stores to offer installment payment solutions, has raised $8M in funding from SRM Asset.

🇿🇦 Revio, a South African payment orchestration platform helping merchants optimize their order to cash lifecycle, has raised $5.2M in Seed funding led by QED Investors.

🇲🇾 MADCash, a Malaysian startup providing microfunding to women entrepreneurs, has raised ~$1M in pre Series A funding led by Artem Ventures.

🇮🇳 Roopya, an Indian lending infrastructure and risk analytics as a service platform for lenders, has raised ~$611K in Pre-Seed funding led by 100X.VC.

🇦🇪 BILRS, a UAE based cross-border bill payment platform, has raised an undisclosed amount of Pre-Seed funding from Haatch.

🇪🇬 🇺🇸 MoneyHash, an Egypt and US based company that allows companies to build their own customized payment stack, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from the founder of Github.

Healthtech

🇮🇳 Doceree, an Indian programmatic marketing platform helping pharmaceutical and life sciences companies reach healthcare professionals and organizations, has raised $35M in Series B funding led by Creaegis.

🇮🇳 Clinikally, an Indian personalized skincare platform connecting patients with dermatologists, has raised $2.6M in Seed funding from Y Combinator, Tribe Capital, Goodwater Capital, Sequoia’s Scout Fund, and Rebel Fund.

HRTech

🇧🇷 Bondy, a Brazilian HR process automation platform, has raised $740K in funding led by Smart Money Ventures.

Insurtech

🇿🇦 Root, a South African low code insurance platform that helps companies build, sell, and manage insurance products in Africa, the UK, and Europe, has raised $1.5M in funding from Invenfin.

Mobility

🇧🇷 Gringo, a Brazilian all-in-one app for drivers helping them with licensing and documentation, fine and tax payment, and insurance and loans, has raised $29M in funding led by Valor Capital.

Travel

🇮🇩 KozyStay, an Indonesian proptech company offering premium apartments in city centers, has raised $1.5M in Seed funding led by Cercano Management.

Local companies building for global markets.

The pandemic accelerated two ongoing trends; product-led growth and a digital go-to-market became the norm, and enterprises had to digitize faster than ever. Community driven growth happens online, and the API-fication of tech has leveled the playing field when it comes to building software. Global companies in business automation, software and data infrastructure, AI, future of work, and web3 can now be built from anywhere.

Cybersecurity

🇨🇴 Lumu, a Colombian real-time network monitoring platform, has raised $30M in Series B funding led by Forgepoint Capital.

🇮🇳 Zeron, an Indian AI-powered cyber risk posture management platform, has raised $500K in Seed funding led by Varanium Capital.

Data

🇪🇬 🇸🇦 Intella, an Egypt and Saudi Arabia based platform offering real-time, on-demand market research for businesses, has raised $3.4M in pre Series A funding led by HALA Ventures and Wa’ed Ventures.

🇧🇷 SlingHub, a Brazil based aggregator of LatAm startup ecosystem data, has raised $895K in Seed funding from angel investors.

Devtools and Software Infrastructure

🇮🇳 SigNoz, an Indian open-source observability platform, has raised $5.4M in funding led by SignalFire, with participation from Uncorrelated Ventures and Alumni Ventures.

Horizontal SaaS

🇮🇳 Figr, an Indian AI powered product design platform for software products, has raised $250K in Pre-Seed funding from Antler India.

Life Sciences and Biotech

🇸🇬 Automera, a Singapore based biotech firm developing therapies for cancer, has raised $16M in Series A funding co-led by ALSP and Temasek’s ClavystBio.

🇸🇬 🇺🇸 Engine Biosciences, a Singapore based biotech firm using machine learning and high-throughput experiments to develop new medicines, has raised $5M in Series A3 funding.

Spacetech

🇮🇳 PierSight, an Indian satellite-based surveillance platform the maritime industry, has raised $600K in Pre-Seed funding led by All In Capital.

Vertical SaaS

🇨🇴 Maqui, a Colombian startup helping fashion companies track garment production, has raised $1.5M in Pre-Seed funding.

Web3 and Gaming

🇮🇳 QuriousBit, an Indian casual puzzle gaming studio, has raised $2M in Seed funding led by Lumikai, with participation from General Catalyst.

Who’s Investing

🇺🇸 Global payments leader Visa has launched a $100M fund under Visa Ventures to back generative AI startups globally.

🇰🇪 Enza Capital, a Kenya based pan-African VC firm, has announced the close of its Fund II at $58M.

🇧🇷 Brazilian electric company Copel has launched a $30M fund to invest in clean energy and smart city startups.

🇿🇦 South Africa’s Secha Capital has announced the first close of its second fund at $15.7M, to invest in Southern Africa based startups with social impact.

Place of the Week

There’s a whole world out there to explore. Here’s a guide to visiting the Musandam Fjords.

Thank you for reading 🙏 

This newsletter is very early, and I’m exploring taking this in multiple different directions.

If you found this useful, share this with your friends and colleagues. 

Best,

Gautam