Spend management firm Clara lands $60 million amid rapid transaction growth in LatAm

cleara Brazilian expense management firm, closed with $60 million in equity 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 financial solutions. It also continues to demonstrate rapid growth. In addition, the company partners with financial institutions to provide additional credit capabilities.

Clara is working with 10,000 companies in Latin America, especially in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, and reports an annual execution rate of 5 million credit card transactions, which is equivalent to $1 billion, said Gerry Giacomán Colyer, co-founder. and CEO of Clara. TechCrunch.

TechCrunch reported on Clara in March 2021 on the release and its $3.5 million in pre-seed fundingthen again just a few months later when the company took $30 million in equity and a $50 million revolving line of credit. General Catalyst led both rounds.

Since then, Clara has been able to secure one more round of shares in 2021, that’s three now if you’re counting, with $70 million in Series B funding directed by Coatue. It also brought 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 transactional volume comes from revenue. With the countries we have, we are covering two thirds of LatAm’s GDP. So, there has been a lot of growth since Serie B.”

The new $60 million investment is an extension of Series B, he added. Includes new investors Acrew Capital, Citius, Citi Ventures, Endeavor Catalyst, Ethos, Commerce Ventures, Goanna Capital, Bayhouse Capital and Fluent Ventures, joining existing investors monashees, 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 financing. In May 2021, TechCrunch reported the company’s valuation at $130 million. Giacomán Colyer confirmed this, but refused to provide an updated value beyond the fact that “the valuation has grown substantially.”

As part of the new investment, GGV Capital Managing Director Hans Tung will join Clara’s board of directors.

“Clara’s team is among the strongest we have 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 LatAm. The team had faced expense management challenges as operational executives and understood the problem well.

The new funding will be used to grow Clara’s product and engineering teams and technology development and round out its leadership team.

The company recently made new engineering, product and risk hires from tech and financial giants such as Meta, Nubank and American Express. They include Raquel Hernández, vice president of engineering; Eduardo Moore, product director of Clara Brazil; Alberto Ramos, director of operations; Nicolás Caccaviello, director of fraud and acceptance; and Tina Reich, who joins as a board observer and risk advisor.

Next, Giacomán Colyer said that Clara has been one of the first to develop payment solutions around Brazil’s instant payment method, Pix, and is close to launching her product. He is also looking at how AI applications can benefit data collection to gain insight into a customer’s transactional profile.

“We are only 2 years old, so we still see a lot of upside, including companies that continue to come to us every week,” he said. “In March alone we were meeting all of these top-of-the-line metrics, between 25% and 40%. It was a really outstanding month, and month after month, even in our most conservative scenarios, we see it continue to more than double through the end of this year.”