INVESTMENT NEWS
Why We Invested: ADDI
In Latin America, most underserved consumers lack access to convenient and affordable credit products, if they can access credit at all. In fact, only a small percentage of Latin American consumers have credit cards, and those who do pay very high effective interest rates and tend to reserve balances for emergencies.
We recently led a new investment round in ADDI, a point of sale (POS) financing company based in Bogota, Colombia, that aims to change all that.
ADDI provides underserved consumers with a simple, convenient, affordable and transparent POS loan product that is easier to understand than credit cards. Loans are presented as installment plans at checkout, with a clear schedule of payments due over time, and are approved in less than 10 minutes, while existing credit options might take hours or several visits to the store. ADDI helps make higher ticket products and services accessible for consumers who today have limited financing options. For merchants, both offline and online, ADDI’s POS financing options free up capital and improve sales by offering payment options at checkout.
In Latin America, there’s no clear market leader in the POS finance space, which we understand well through other fund investments such as India’s ZestMoney. There is a large and growing opportunity throughout the region for POS finance, and we believe ADDI has the right strategy, technology platform, and team to succeed in building a category-leading company. ADDI’s initial market is Colombia, and it plans to expand to other Latin American countries in the future.
We are especially excited to partner with the ADDI leadership team. CEO Santiago Suarez ran the New Product Development & Emerging Tech group at JPMorgan Chase, and he was responsible for strategy and corporate development at LendingClub. Santiago also advised fintechs through Y Combinator before returning to Colombia to start ADDI. His co-founders Daniel Vallejo (CFO) and Elmer Ortega (CPO) round out a strong team with a proven ability to execute and attract international and diverse talent.
While the COVID-19 crisis has hit retail particularly hard in Colombia and elsewhere in Latin America, the team has impressed us with their quick response. ADDI’s lenders and strong investment syndicate — which includes existing investors Andreessen Horowitz and Monashees, Tom Stafford (partner at DST), alongside new investors S7 Ventures, Foundation Capital and — give us comfort that ADDI will emerge from the crisis in a very strong competitive position. With this financing round, we believe ADDI has sufficient resources to not only weather the storm, but to emerge from it in a strong and dominant position in the POS finance space in Latin America.
We’re delighted to welcome ADDI to our portfolio.
Disclaimer: Quona portfolio companies were selected for profiles based on objective, non-performance-based criteria for the purpose of illustrating the types of investment made by Quona funds and their impacts. These profiles are being provided for illustrative purposes only, in order to provide examples of the idea generation, research, and thought process of Quona investment teams. No representation is made as to whether or if the investment ideas represented in these profiles have been or will be profitable. It should not be assumed that Quona will be able to identify similar investment opportunities in the future, or that any such opportunities will be profitable. The above statements include the opinions of the Firm and are for illustrative purposes only. There is no assurance that any trends depicted or objectives described in Quona profiles will continue or become successful.
