With the close of an extended $110 million Series E funding round, small- to medium-sized business (SMB) financial services startup Konfío is now a Mexican unicorn valued at $1.3 billion, Bloomberg reported.
As the country’s fourth unicorn, Konfío joins used-car seller Kavak, cryptocurrency exchange Bitso and payment processor Clip, according to the report.
Read more: Mexico’s Used Car Startup Kavak Raises $700M in Series E Round
Konfío will use the capital to build out its product offerings and continue to eye opportunities for strategic acquisitions that can expand its product suite, the report stated.
“At Konfío, we see technology as a tool to level a field of action that for a long time was uneven in opportunities, to provide growing companies with greater opportunities and conditions to expand and compete successfully with larger companies,” CEO and Founder David Arana said in a blog post. “That is our purpose.”
He added in the post that despite the challenges wrought by 2020, the company increased its loan portfolio by 20% and continually kept its doors open to entrepreneurs.
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The round was led by Lightrock, and there was participation from Softbank, VEF, Kaszek Ventures, IFC, Tarsadia Capital and QED Investors, the post stated.
Konfío is primarily an SMB lender that specializes in extending credit to companies that are often inadequately served by legacy financial institutions (FIs). The startup’s team is comprised of leaders who are experts in technology, finance, marketing, data science and the economy, according to its website.
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Aside from its core mission of SMB lending, the company has expanded to become an all-in-one platform for SMB solutions, financial services and business management. The company said it expanded in accordance with the obstacles its customers were facing, per a separate blog post.
“Today we offer Mexican entrepreneurs a platform of solutions that cover financing, management and payments, offering different tools that help companies in all aspects of their growth,” the company said in the post.
