Social commerce startup Elenas secures $20M to assist extra LatAm girls promote on-line • TechCrunch

Elenas estimates that 11 million girls in Latin America promote client objects through catalogs and door-to-door gross sales strategies. It’s digitizing that course of to allow them to extra simply promote from house.

Founder and CEO Zach Oschin began the Colombia-based social commerce firm in 2018 (and took part in our Latin American Startup Battlefield that yr) to maneuver the normal impartial gross sales course of on-line.

Right here’s the way it works: Entrepreneurs can browse a portfolio of a whole lot of hundreds of wholesale merchandise in areas like magnificence, private care, house items and electronics, determine what they wish to promote, how a lot they wish to mark up the worth after which promote the merchandise on social channels like WhatsApp and Fb.

Elenas additionally takes care of the product sourcing, supply and fee assortment. Up to now yr, greater than 100,000 girls in Colombia and Mexico have bought over 2 million orders and earned thousands and thousands of {dollars} on the platform.

To speed up that trajectory, Elenas raised $2 million in seed funding in 2020 and one other $6 million in Sequence A capital in 2021. Now the corporate is again with a fair larger Sequence B spherical of $20 million. This provides the corporate greater than $28 million in complete funding thus far.

Whereas Oschin didn’t go into element on Elenas’ valuation, he did say it was a rise from the earlier spherical. He additionally stated the corporate grew income over 5x between the rounds.

DILA Capital leads this new funding and is joined by FJ Labs, Endeavor Catalyst, the Inter-American Growth Financial institution’s IDB Lab, Broadhaven Ventures, Mercado Libre, Grupo Bolivar and Leo Capital.

“Elenas is revolutionizing the direct-sales trade by giving thousands and thousands of individuals throughout the area the chance to promote hundreds of merchandise by their digital catalog,” stated Alejandro Diez Barroso, managing associate at DILA Capital, in a written assertion. “We’re satisfied that we’re backing the appropriate group in the appropriate market and on the proper time.”

Being a rustic with thrice the inhabitants of Colombia, Mexico is poised to be the corporate’s largest market within the subsequent yr, and it has already “achieved a worthwhile and sustainable progress mannequin” there, Oschin stated.

Since launching there in 2021, Elenas was in a position to scale up 30%, which implies Mexico accounts for greater than a 3rd of its enterprise in only one yr, which he stated took two-and-a-half years to realize in Colombia.

That is whereas different e-commerce corporations haven’t fared as effectively, Oschin stated. For instance, he notes that by beginning with decrease ticket objects like with grocery supply, some corporations weren’t in a position to attain the appropriate margin profile or construct out infrastructure to the extent wanted to succeed in profitability.

“There was a large increase of social commerce corporations closely funded in 2021, however that additionally meant the rise of social commerce fashions that have been extremely unprofitable,” Oschin added. “Some obtain unicorn standing, and we are actually seeing a few of these fashions pulling again, shut down or shedding workers.”

He went on to elucidate that Elenas bucked this pattern by specializing in nonperishable objects, like life-style merchandise, house items, vogue and equipment, from the start, which yielded extra wholesome revenue margins and better ticket costs.

Not having to construct its personal infrastructure was one other approach. That mannequin enabled the corporate to scale throughout Colombia and Mexico and ship to 600 cities, together with rural areas the place that had not been beforehand achieved.

Along with rising income 5x between the Sequence A and Sequence B rounds, the corporate greater than doubled its worker headcount to 230 folks.

Up subsequent, Elenas will proceed to develop its vendor community in each markets with deal with scaling it up considerably over the following yr in order that it could spend money on higher merchandise and experiences for each sellers and suppliers.

It can additionally infuse some capital into engineering and product to construct out further core options, for instance, vendor enterprise administration instruments like buyer relationship administration, product suggestions and monetary providers.

“We wish to develop into monetary providers that energy their companies,” Oschin stated. “Fifty p.c of our sellers have by no means had a checking account earlier than, so that is an underbanked inhabitants, and when working a enterprise, having monetary providers is essential. Our partnership with Grupo Bolivar might be engaged on that.”