Clara, a Brazilian expense management company, closed $60 million in capital in a round led by GGV Capital.
The company launched its product in 2021 and offers reporting software for better financial decision making, locally issued corporate cards, bill payment and financing solutions. It also continues to demonstrate rapid growth. In addition, the company partners with financial institutions to provide additional lending capabilities.
Clara works with 10,000 businesses in Latin America, particularly in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, and reports an annual credit card transaction rate of 5 million, which equates to $1 billion, said Gerry Giacomán Colyer, co-founder and CEO of Clara. TechCrunch.
TechCrunch reported on Clara in March 2021 about the launch and its $3.5 million in pre-funding, then a few months later when the company took in $30 million in equity and a 50-year revolving credit line millions of dollars. General Catalyst led both of these rounds.
Since then, Clara was able to secure one more round of capital in 2021, now three if you’re counting, with $70 million in Series B funding led by Coatue. It also included commitments of up to $150 million in credit from Goldman Sachs in 2022 and $90 million from Accial Capital a month ago.
“It has been a great boost for Clara,” said Giacomán Colyer. “More than 10 times the transaction volume comes from revenue. With the countries we have, we’re covering two-thirds of LatAm’s GDP. So there’s been a lot of growth since Series B.”
The new $60 million investment is an extension of the Series B, he added. It includes new investors Acrew Capital, Citius, Citi Ventures, Endeavor Catalyst, Ethos, Commerce Ventures, Goanna Capital, Bayhouse Capital and Fluent Ventures, who joined existing monashees investors Coatue, Picus Capital, DST Global Partners, Alter Global, General Catalyst and more than a dozen angel investors.
Clara has now raised $160 million in total equity funding. In May 2021, TechCrunch reported that the company’s valuation was $130 million. Giacomán Colyer confirmed this, but declined to provide an updated value beyond “the valuation has grown substantially.”
Clara’s co-founders Diego Iván García Escobedo and Gerry Giacomán Colyer Image credits: Clear
As part of the new investment, GGV Capital CEO Hans Tung will join Clara’s board of directors.
“Clara’s team is one of the strongest we’ve seen in Latin America,” Tung said in a written statement. “Expense management is a huge category globally, and Clara is the first to use software to create solutions in Latin America. The team had encountered expense management challenges as operational executives and understood well the problem”.
The new funding will be used to grow Clara’s engineering and product and technology development teams and to round out its leadership team.
The company recently made new hires in engineering, product and risk that came from tech and financial giants like Meta, Nubank and American Express. Among them, Raquel Hernández, vice president of engineering; Eduardo Moore, Product Director of Clara Brasil; Alberto Ramos, director of operations; Nicolas Caccaviello, director of fraud and acceptance; and Tina Reich, who joins as a board observer and risk advisor.
Giacomán Colyer then said that Clara has been one of the first developers of payment solutions around Brazil’s instant payment method, Pix, and is about to launch its product. It also looks at how artificial intelligence applications can benefit data collection to gain insight into a customer’s transactional profile.
“We’re only 2 years old, so we’re still seeing a lot of upside, including businesses that continue to come to us every week,” he said. “In the month of March we complied with all these top-line metrics, between 25% and 40%. It was a truly exceptional month, and month after month, even in our most conservative scenarios, we see it continuing to grow more than twofold through the end of this year.”
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Ikaroa, a full stack tech company, is proud to partner with Clara, a spend management firm that has recently announced securing $60M in funding. This funding aims to support Clara’s rapid transaction growth in Latin America, a region that is becoming increasingly important for the financial services industry.
The Clara team has already established successful businesses in several regions including Mexico, Colombia, Brazil and Chile, and this additional investment is poised to further bolster their activities across the region.
Clara’s proprietary technology platform simplifies and automates financial operations, provides business insights and analytics, and streamlines corporate payments and treasury management. The platform has been widely accepted by SMEs, financial institutions, and technology companies.
Ikaroa was delighted to partner with Clara in their mission to expand financial services in Latin America. Our team is proud to provide the full stack tech services and expertise to support Clara’s growth. We are confident that with this additional funding, Clara will be able to strengthen its presence in Latin America and enable businesses to manage their financial processes in an easier and more efficient way.
This investment brings the cumulative total raised by Clara to $85 million, and we are looking forward to more exciting growth from the firm in the coming months. We are very proud to be a part of their success in Latin America, and of their sound vision for the region.
