Mendel plans to improve its offering that combines expense, payment and corporate travel management with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). A few days ago, the Argentina-based startup announced the closing of a $35 million Series B round led by Base10 Partners.
The round, which had the participation of PayPal Ventures and the backing of existing investors such as Infinity Ventures, Industry Ventures and Hi.vc, will be used to prepare its expansion to other countries in the region in the next two years. The expansion would be into Chile, Colombia and Peru during 2025, and the target for 2026 would be Brazil.
Although, the current focus is on continuing to consolidate the Mexican and Argentine markets, Alejandro Zecler, co-founder of Mendel, told Contxto.
The round will also serve to “scale our AI capabilities to further optimize processes such as expense categorization, invoice recovery, fraud detection and internal policy validation,” Zecler added.
“We want the experience for our customers to be increasingly automated, intelligent and efficient (…). The goal is for our customers to spend less time on operational tasks and more time making strategic decisions,” Zecler emphasized.
Mendel has received $130 million in venture capital and debt. In this round, amid an environment where capital injections are more stringent than ever, the challenge was “to find the balance between showing our growth potential and, at the same time, demonstrating operational efficiency. Fortunately, we were able to do so by showing concrete results,” said Zecler.
“In our case, the combination of growth, operational efficiency and a solid value proposition for large companies allowed us to attract the interest of top-tier funds,” added Zecler. Also participating in this round were Endeavor Catalyst, Jaime Arrieta, co-founder of Chilean human resources startup, Buk, and Rodrigo Tognini, co-founder of Brazilian business accounting and expense management platform, Conta Simples.
Threefold growth
Mendel differentiates itself from traditional players with a software-first approach oriented to the enterprise segment. It currently operates with more than 500 clients between Mexico and Argentina. In Mexico, its largest market, it works with companies such as Mercado Libre, FEMSA, Adecco and Arcos Dorados, among others.
The goal this year is to continue with last year’s growth, in which it tripled its annual turnover, will continue to deepen its adoption in the enterprise segment, expand geographically and strengthen the technological development of its products.
After the investment round, its valuation grew significantly (although he did not give the exact amount) compared to the previous one, said Zecler, which for him validates both its business model and the opportunity that Mendel is capturing in Latin America.
