NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Monday, April 25, 2016

Guadalajara microloan startup Kueski announced a massive funding series over the weekend, bringing in $35 million with the potential to increase that to $100 million. The Series A round was led by Richmond Global Ventures, Rise Capital, the CrunchFund and Variv Capital. It also included Victory Park Capital, Angel Ventures Mexico, Core Ventures Group and Auria Capital.

“We feel honored to partner with such an incredible group of investors,” commented Adalberto Flores, Co-Founder and CEO of Kueski. “Their expertise in emerging markets and online lending businesses will enable our company to advance our market leadership and launch additional products in order to position Kueski as a leader in online lending for all of Latin America.”

While a microlender, Kueski aims its business at middle class customers. Like other fintech lenders, they claim their own special analysis of a particular combination of indicators for someone’s creditworthiness. They look at applicants’ “digital footprint” and allow their algorithms to accept or reject a loan application, supposedly in seconds.

The story here is not necessarily the business model, as much as the size of the round in the country the business is located. There has a been a proliferation of online lending business models and companies for each of those subindustries. But typically London leads the conversation on online lending and peer-to-peer loans, followed by New York, Hong Kong and Singapore. There are several prominent fintech companies in the country, including Mexico City startup Rocket.la which just raised $400,000 in seed funding in October.