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Image Credits:Leal / Leal co-founders Camilo Martinez and Florence Frech
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Leal , a Bogota , Colombia - based retail tech company providing client engagement in Latin America , raise $ 5 million in a turn that CEO Camilo Martinez call a “ pre - Series B. ”
LEAP Global Partners and Rakuten Capital conscientious objector - led the one shot and were link up by Morro Ventures and Salkantay Ventures . The rhythm comes about two age after the company raised $ 10 million in Series A capital letter , this one cobalt - lead by Rakuten and IDC Ventures . In total , the caller has secured $ 20.5 million in venture - backed capital .
Leal works with clientele - to - consumer blade , e - commerce site and fiscal establishment across Latin America to enable merchants to create a customer database to then volunteer cashback and rewards products to firm shopper on everyday purchase .
To do this , Leal has built consolidation with 160 different peak - of - sale systems . Most of the POS systems are local , however , Leal form to integrate with freehanded players in the United States and Europe that are n’t widely used in Latin America due to monetary value , Martinez told TechCrunch .
Also , merchant can cross customer behaviour and purchasing patterns for customers who traditionally pay with John Cash , a payment method acting notoriously known for being difficult to cover . They also have access to military campaign management putz for targeted communications .
Devolut leverages e - Department of Commerce increment in Latin America to develop reverse logistics peter
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Martinez started the company in 2016 with Florence Frech , COO . At the time , the company was on “ an amazing growth journey , ” according to Martinez . Then the global pandemic happened .
“ We lost 85 % of our merchants , ” he said . “ We were heavily reliant on brick - and - howitzer retail merchant . Lockdowns were some of the strongest ones after Asia , for representative , over six months . We almost had to rebuild our business from 2021 onwards because we had no clients . ”
Leal got its rut back . In 2021 , the SaaS marketing troupe launch a new feature for grocery shoppers to skim newspaper reception and earn Leal Coins that could be redeem for goods and services like gasoline or food saving via Rappo . A year later , Leal expand its advantage program throughout Mexico , Colombia and Central America .
Today , the society works with more than 1,000 brands across 15 industries and in eight commonwealth . Its customer list includes Subway , Verifone and Chevron . Leal has more than 6 million user , up from 1.5 million in 2020 , of which 3.5 million alive users link up in the last 12 months .
“ We ’ve been grow a lot of gamification , so we can service our consumer in different ways , ” Martinez say . “ There ’s an engagement course and saucy conversation tools so you ’re not getting transactional messages , but you ’re getting more human - like conversation . We ’ve also been working on different merchandising solutions to hire the consumer so we can be closer to their modus vivendi and wreak them bigger value . ”
With the new investiture , Leal plan to reach $ 10 million in annual go back revenue , focus on extra penetration in Mexico , omnichannel communicating and a set of tools that includes smarter data collection and interactions , and mechanisation of benefits to maximize conversions .
It will also forge on engineering science growing to amend its artificial intelligence service mannequin for further personalization of app reward and benefit . Martinez also wants to leverage generative AI for enhanced chatbot interactions between brands and consumers .
“ Two of the channels we ’re going to tone are WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger so we can have other sources on how to communicate with the consumer , ” Martinez aver . “ With AI and GenAI , we can make better predictions with the data . We can increase experiment and plunge one C of unlike campaigns for client to see what ’s cohere with the consumer and then iterate with different AI models . We are also going to act upon on content initiation so our platform is more personalized and automatise to require less human interposition and be plug away - and - play . ”
Embracing digital Department of Commerce may be retailer ’ best stakes for remain forward of a tight - moving diligence
