The Series A fundraise was led by Monashees, Valor, and Balderton. The CEOs of Loggi, Uala, Rappi, and Madeira Madeira also invested.
Merama is hoping to become the largest e-commerce product business in Latin America.
Their business model is to partner with the leading existing merchants across Latin America (currently they are focused on Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile) and use their team, capital, and technology to fuel additional hypergrowth.
Unlike the dozens of Amazon aggregators that have popped up over the past few years, Merama is solely focused on Latin America, works with very few partners, and does not purchase companies outright. Instead, they are focused on identifying the top few companies in certain major categories and selectively partnering with the best by purchasing a stake in their business.
Merama was co-founded by Sujay Tyle, who formerly was Co-Founder and CEO of Balderton portfolio company, Frontier Car Group (sold to Naspers for ~$700M USD in December 2019). Tyle is currently a Venture Partner at Balderton alongside his role at Merama.
Merchants are seeing hypergrowth but still struggle with fundamental problems which creates a ceiling in their potential. For example, they are unable to expand internationally, get reliable and cost effective working capital, build technology tools to support their own online presence. This is where Merama comes in.
