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

By Christine Hall

Elenas estimates that 11 million women in Latin America sell consumer items via catalogs and door-to-door sales methods. It is digitizing that process so they can more easily sell from home.

Founder and CEO Zach Oschin started the Colombia-based social commerce company in 2018 (and participated in our Latin American Startup Battlefield that year) to move the traditional independent sales process online.

Here’s how it works: Entrepreneurs can browse a portfolio of hundreds of thousands of wholesale products in areas like beauty, personal care, home goods and electronics, decide what they want to sell, how much they want to mark up the price and then promote the products on social channels like WhatsApp and Facebook.

Photo courtesy of bfishadow.