- Nuvemshop’s e-commerce platform serves 75,000 merchants across Latin America;
- It will use the proceeds to expand into new markets including Colombia, Chile and Peru;
- Nuvemshop intends to public list in the US.
Argentine e-commerce solutions startup Nuvemshop (or Tiendanube) announced on Monday that it raised a $90 million Series D round led by Accel with participation from ThornTree Capital and existing investors Kaszek, Qualcomm Ventures LLC.
Prominent e-commerce leaders also contributed, including Mike Micucci (former CEO of Salesforce CommerceCloud), Mark Lavelle and Mark Lenhard (former CEO and SVP of Strategy at Magento, respectively), Jamie Sutton (former Head of Tech Partnerships at Shopify), Kevin McKeand (former Head of Strategic Partnerships at BigCommerce), and Minesh Shah (COO of Stitchfix).
READ ALSO: Nuvemshop’s retailers sales grew 166% in 2020: O Estado de São Paulo
In conjunction with the investment, Accel Partner, Andrew Braccia, who sits on the board of directors of global leaders like Slack, Squarespace, PagerDuty and Cornershop, joins Nuvemshop’s board.
The company did not disclose its valuation, but says the deal makes it one of Latin America’s next unicorns. Nuvemshop’s e-commerce platform serves 75,000 merchants across Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, ranging from direct-to-consumer (DTC) upstarts to dominant brands such as Play Mobil, Osram, Billabong, Coppel, Luigi Bosca, Zaira Beauty, and Lolja.
As LABS has shown, Nuvemshop is part of the select group of startups that managed to grow amid the crisis, fueled by social distancing and the growing need of buying essential and non essential items online. The startup ended 2020 with a total turnover of BRL 1.3 billion, an increase of 166% compared to that recorded in 2019.
Nuvemshop white-label platform
Unlike e-commerce giants like Amazon and Mercado Libre, which have set up their own logistics and finance structures and have increasingly invested in their own content and services, Nuvemshop uses a system that allows retailers to choose their own partners for deliveries and payments.
“We operate as a white label, so that retailers reinforce their own brands,” Santiago Sosa, CEO and co-founder of Nuvemshop, told Reuters.
Although the firm has its own payment arm, which should be reinforced now with the round, Sosa says that the service is just an option for customers looking for lower rates than those charged by rivals to anticipate receivables.
Surfing the wave of the fastest growing e-commerce market in the world, Nuvemshop gathered investors look for a Series D just after four months when it announced its $30 million Series C round.
“Latin America is a vast market, filled with talented entrepreneurs, yet many lack the tools and resources needed to thrive,” said Sosa, in a press statement. “Our purpose with Nuvemshop is to reduce these barriers to entry for entrepreneurs, and we’re proud to be the e-commerce platform of choice for businesses looking to build, launch and promote their online presence.”
The investment will enable Nuvemshop to continue improving its platform for merchants. The company will also develop and grow its ecosystem, extending support to merchants of all sizes, while boosting their presence in Brazil, Argentina and Mexico, and expanding into new markets including Colombia, Chile and Peru.
“We expect to grow more than 20 times in the next 5 years,” said Sosa, forecasting that Nuvemshop this year will register BRL 7 billion in customer sales in Latin America, double the amount registered in 2020, which grew 280% over 2019,” said Sosa, to Reuters.
More immediately, the company’s plan involves expanding the number of employees, now in 400, to 2,000 by 2023. With the resources of another fundraising ahead, it also plans to develop its own logistical structure, while preparing to an IPO in the US.
*This story was updated to correct an information. This new round came four months after its Series C in October 2020, and not two months.
