Elenas estimates that 11 million ladies in Latin America promote shopper objects by way of catalogs and door-to-door gross sales strategies. It’s digitizing that course of to allow them to extra simply promote from dwelling.
Founder and CEO Zach Oschin began the Colombia-based social commerce firm in 2018 (and participated in our Latin American Startup Battlefield that 12 months) to maneuver the standard unbiased gross sales course of on-line.
Right here’s the way it works: Entrepreneurs can browse a portfolio of tons of of hundreds of wholesale merchandise in areas like magnificence, private care, dwelling items and electronics, resolve what they need to promote, how a lot they need to mark up the value after which promote the merchandise on social channels like WhatsApp and Fb.
Elenas additionally takes care of the product sourcing, supply and fee assortment. Previously 12 months, greater than 100,000 ladies in Colombia and Mexico have offered over 2 million orders and earned tens of millions 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 Series A capital in 2021. Now the corporate is again with a fair greater Collection B spherical of $20 million. This provides the corporate greater than $28 million in whole funding up to now.
Whereas Oschin didn’t go into element on Elenas’ valuation, he did say it was a rise from the earlier spherical. He additionally mentioned 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 Improvement Financial institution’s IDB Lab, Broadhaven Ventures, Mercado Libre, Grupo Bolivar and Leo Capital.
“Elenas is revolutionizing the direct-sales business by giving tens of millions of individuals throughout the area the chance to promote hundreds of merchandise by way of their digital catalog,” mentioned Alejandro Diez Barroso, managing associate at DILA Capital, in a written assertion. “We’re satisfied that we’re backing the suitable workforce in the suitable market and on the proper time.”
Being a rustic with 3 times the inhabitants of Colombia, Mexico is poised to be the corporate’s largest market within the subsequent 12 months, and it has already “achieved a worthwhile and sustainable progress mannequin” there, Oschin mentioned.
Since launching there in 2021, Elenas was in a position to scale up 30%, which suggests Mexico accounts for greater than a 3rd of its enterprise in only one 12 months, which he mentioned took two-and-a-half years to attain in Colombia.
That is whereas different e-commerce firms haven’t fared as properly, Oschin mentioned. For instance, he notes that by beginning with decrease ticket objects like with grocery supply, some firms weren’t in a position to attain the suitable margin profile or construct out infrastructure to the extent wanted to achieve profitability.
“There was an enormous increase of social commerce firms 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 at the moment are seeing a few of these fashions pulling again, shut down or shedding workers.”
He went on to clarify that Elenas bucked this pattern by specializing in nonperishable objects, like way of life merchandise, dwelling 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 Collection A and Collection B rounds, the corporate greater than doubled its worker headcount to 230 individuals.
Up subsequent, Elenas will proceed to increase its vendor community in each markets with concentrate on scaling it up considerably over the subsequent 12 months in order that it will possibly put money into higher merchandise and experiences for each sellers and suppliers.
It can additionally infuse some capital into engineering and product to construct out extra core options, for instance, vendor enterprise administration instruments like buyer relationship administration, product suggestions and monetary providers.
“We need to increase into monetary providers that energy their companies,” Oschin mentioned. “Fifty % of our sellers have by no means had a checking account earlier than, so that is an underbanked inhabitants, and when operating a enterprise, having monetary providers is necessary. Our partnership with Grupo Bolivar shall be engaged on that.”
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