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Other global hubs, including Seattle, Bangalore and Beijing, have even shorter track records for startup funding. And tech hotspots like Austin and Sao Paolo, have really taken off only in the past few years.

So which places are set to be the next growth centers of startup action? For this latest Crunchbase slideshow, we perused our country-by-country funding data to pinpoint which nations are seeing the biggest jumps in funding activity.

Click through to see which countries saw the biggest year-over-year investment gains. The��tabulations also include a look at deal counts, top cities for startups and notable rounds.*

*For this dataset, we did not include seed financings, focusing only on venture rounds of Series A and beyond.��

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Just yesterday, an online financial services platform for small and medium businesses (SMBs) in Mexico, announced it had raised $100 million in a Series D round led by .

With that round, according to Crunchbase data, venture funding in Mexico has more than doubled in 2019 so far to $541 million across 106 deals. That’s 104.4 percent more than the $264.7 million invested in 134 rounds in 2018, and a staggering 360 percent increase from the $117.6 million raised across 140 rounds raised in 2017.

It is important to note that the 2019 figure will likely be even higher as it is subject to reporting delays.

It is also notable that far more money was raised across 28 fewer rounds in 2019 compared to the year prior. This signals a maturing market with larger deal sizes.

Deal Details and Fintech Overall

���ɱ����’s also participated in Mexico City-based Konfio’s latest round, along with other existing investors and . The financing brings five-year-old Konfio’s to over $400 million across four venture rounds and several debt financing structures, according to Crunchbase data.

Fintech startups in particular have been recipients of venture dollars in Latin America considering the high interest rates and lack of credit access across much of the region. Konfio describes itself as “an online lending platform that helps micro-businesses in Latin America who don’t have access to credit obtain affordable loans, thanks to a proprietary algorithm that uses technology to measure creditworthiness.”

By using AI and data analytics, the company targets “underserved businesses,” including those without any formal credit history. It claims that since January 2017, Mexican companies across all industries that have received working capital loans from Konfio have grown sales by 28 percent on average.

Other recent recipients of venture funding in Mexico include , a Mexico City-based startup that wants to democratize banking services in Mexico, which raised $57.5 million in debt and equity seed funding in October with the goal of becoming the ”of Mexico,” among other things. Also in August, Mexico City-based fintech startup raised $42 million in a Series B that was co-led by and .

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New York-based , out of Chile, Spain’s , Silicon Valley-based , other unnamed funds and angels also participated in the round, which comes just months after the company raised a pre-seed round of an undisclosed amount.

, former president of (a large ride-sharing company operating in Latin America, Spain, and Portugal) founded earlier this year with a mission to “disrupt the Latin American grocery industry.”

At first, ��ü���ٴ� operated a website only but recently launched a mobile app. It is the first supermarket in Mexico with no physical stores, according to Weder.

How It Works

Customers can buy their groceries directly from the website or via the app and ��ü���ٴ� delivers the order to the customer’s location of choice.

While other entities such as Walmart, for example, deliver groceries in Mexico, ��ü���ٴ� prides itself on working directly with fresh produce suppliers in an effort to offer “the freshest” fruits, vegetables, meats and fish in the market. It also offers a variety of products such as pantry staples, personal hygiene and beauty, home and cleaning, drinks and pet-related items.

Mexican, and Latin American consumers as a whole, have been reluctant to order groceries from some of these larger retailers and companies due to concerns about freshness and quality, Weder said.

The company opts to choose items only from local suppliers, thus giving them a new channel to sell their products (which can get buried in larger supermarkets). ��ü���ٴ� also prides itself on developing fair trade agreements with suppliers.

Initially, ��ü���ٴ� is focused on Mexico City but plans to expand into additional Mexican cities as well as other regions in Latin America such as Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Chile, according to Weder.

Regional Demand

, partner at Foundation Capital and also a Mexico City native, said he was impressed with Weder’s work at Cabify and was excited to get involved with this venture early on.

“We’ve seen that type of model of warehouse and D2C for groceries be very successful in other geographies,” he told me. “But that model didn’t quite exist in Mexico yet.”

Increased internet penetration and the availability of smartphones in the region “opens up a world of opportunity for an entrepreneur to reach consumers directly,” Gonzalez said.

The investment in ��ü���ٴ� marks Palo Alto, Calif.-based Foundation Capital’s fourth LatAm investment. It’s also backed Colombian unicorn . The funding is also another example of increasing global investor interest in Latin America. Mexican startups in particular raised a total of $310 million in venture funding in the first half of 2019, according to LAVCA, compared to $75 million in the first half of 2018, as you can see in the chart below.

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Specifically, the digital banking startup raised $7.5 million in equity and $50 million in debt financing, according to CEO San Francisco-based����provided the debt portion.

Washington, D.C.-based led the round, which Moller believes to be one of the largest seed rounds ever recorded in Mexico. (Crunchbase data supports this, according to our data specialist Jason Rowley, who ran ).

London-based �� – a new firm that was ��of��Palo Alto-based (which invested in Chime’s Series A and Series C rounds) by��, New York-based , and out of California also participated in the financing.

Notably, the investment marks Aspect Ventures’ first outside of the U.S., according to Moller.

In conjunction with the funding announcement, Klar also launched its free service today. The company’s ultimate goal is to offer Mexicans an alternative to traditional credit cards and debit services.

History

Moller founded Klar about 10 months ago along with CFO Daniel Autrique, a Mexican economist and Stanford University graduate; and Gianluigi Davassi, CTO, who helped build German digital bank (valued at more than $4 billion).

The Mexican market opportunity in the space is huge, according to Moller, considering that an estimated mere 15 percent of adults in the country own credit cards. ( pegged the number of Mexicans aged 25 or older owning a credit card as of 2017��as low as 9.22 percent).

“I think our opportunity in Mexico is even greater than what Chime has done in the U.S. because if you think about it, about 50 percent of the population doesn’t have a bank account,” Moller told Crunchbase News. “Chime has done a phenomenal job in a market where people have access to bank accounts. Here in Mexico, we have that target market plus the 50 percent of people that don’t have a bank account.”

In addition to its headquarters in Mexico City, Klar has an engineering team that works out of Berlin. The company currently has about 25 employees, with engineers outnumbering “business people,” a fact that makes Moller “very happy.”

He acknowledged that Klar is in its early stages.

“We want to build a bank and there’s a lot of work to be done on the product side,” he said. Currently, the company is offering a debit account with cashback returns for the user that allows for transfers to account holders at other banks. Klar is also offering a revolving credit line.

“We’re betting on this in the near future to lead the company’s growth,” Moller told Crunchbase News. “Demand for credit is considerable here and few people have access to credit with humane rates.”

For example, its credit lines will have interest rates ranging in the “mid-40s,” said Moller, which may sound like a lot to those in the United States, but it’s still much lower than the average 60 percent interest rate on credit cards in Mexico.

What’s worse, according to Moller, is that such a small segment of the population doesn’t even have access to a credit card.

“The remaining 85 percent have to borrow with interest rates as high as the 1,000s,” he said. “We think credit is very blurry in Mexico and credit instruments are fairly difficult to understand.”

As such, Klar aims to offer its services and products with “clarity and transparency.” For example, if a consumer wants to buy a television set for $200 and use a revolving credit line with Klar, the company will give that person the option to pay back the money with the amount owed varying depending on the amount of time it takes the person to repay the loan.

“Instead of talking interest rates, we want to talk on their terms,” Moller said.

Investor Point of View

Santander InnoVentures, the $200 million corporate venture fund of Spain’s Banco Santander, has also put money in out of the United Kingdom, in Brazil, and in Germany.

, partner and head of investments at Santander InnoVentures, said that overall, the fintech sector in Mexico is “booming, reaching levels of quality and sophistication that, for those of us who have been following the market for nearly a decade, are very encouraging.”

The country has seen a rise in both the number of fintech companies and inflow of VC money into the country over the past three to five years, wrote Martínez in an email to Crunchbase News. Martínez also joined Klar’s board with the funding round.

“The proportion of foreign capital from Tier I funds coming into the country as a percentage of the total invested capital is growing fast, showing there is international recognition of Mexico as a promising market,” he wrote. “Teams of the earlier stage startups are increasingly international, showing Mexico is a good place to be an entrepreneur.”

The country’s recently-passed�� “,” shows that the Mexican government is paying attention to the industry “and that there is a will to create a common framework for fintech innovation to flourish further,” noted Martinez despite the measure still being under discussion among industry stakeholders.

As for Klar, the company has a number of unique factors that Santander finds very attractive, he said.

“First, I haven’t ever seen a team with such pedigree in Mexico, with loads of international talent, and people coming from large, successful tech companies such as Google and Uber,” Martinez said. “Plus, the product is amazing, from a design perspective and from its novelty in the broader offering available to customers in Mexico.”

Growing Interest In The Region

The funding is illustrative of two phenomena we’ve reported on this year: for one, Latin America as a whole is seeing increased global VC interest. And with a growing number of global investors (like ) putting money into the region, it seems to have turned a corner in terms of its maturity.

Secondly,��VC funding into Latin America is growing, a lot. According to The Association for Private Capital Investment in Latin America (��venture funding into Latin American countries nearly doubled in 2018 to a record $1.98 billion compared to $1.14 billion over 2017. Mexico was the second most active market by number of deals (95 startup investments totaling $175 million), according to LAVCA’s data, as you can see in the chart below.

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The round is notable in that it marks both Goldman Sachs PSI (the investment firm’s tech-focused group) and Point72’s “first foray into the Mexican market,” according to by Credijusto.

Founded in 2015, the company provides asset-backed loans and equipment leases to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Credijusto has 200 employees. Since its inception, the startup said it has launched several financial products “and originated over $90 million in term loans and leases.”

With this round, Credijusto has raised a total of $153 million in venture and debt equity. Credijusto brought in $11 million in a May 2018 that was led by (which we reported yesterday just raised two funds totaling $600 million). It also closed on of up to $100 million from Goldman Sachs in March.

, , and , as well as existing investors Kaszek Ventures, , , John J. Mackand and also participated in the latest round.

For Credijusto, its offering is in demand in Mexico in particular because it said (citing “official data”) that SMEs make up 99 percent of businesses and account for 74 percent of total employment in the country.

Despite being so dominant, “these companies receive only 15% of total outstanding credit, as banks reject over 80% of all loan applications from SMEs,” the company said.

, a partner at Point72 Ventures, said Credijusto’s “tech-enabled approach to meeting the financial needs of Mexico’s underserved SME segment has huge potential.”

“This is a very large market opportunity in which, after four years of rapid growth, the company has significant competitive advantages,” he added.

Kaszek Managing Partner , who sits on Credijusto’s board, told me via email this morning that his firm participated “with more than” its pro rata in this new round after leading the company’s Series A.

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