INVESTMENTS ON THE RISE IN LATIN AMERICA Dealbook reports that PE and VC firms committed USD 7.9 billion last year to invest in Latin America, up by 21 percent over the previous year, according to the Latin American Private Equity and Venture Capital Association. The number of investments in 2012 grew to 237, which is a 37 percent increase over 2011. Consumer and retail are the hot sectors. According to LAVCA, the region still has a way to go to catch up to the UK and Israel, but the trend is positive. (see graphic above) Image source: Lavca
Brazil continues to be the biggest magnet for capital, region in receiving 72 percent of the total amount invested and 62 percent of the number of deals. Mexico had no appreciable increase in number of deals but total dollars committed grew by 50 percent.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: SALES BOOSTER “We weren’t planning on doing an A round before this summer, but we saw some great momentum in the fourth quarter of 2012, and decided to add a little rocket fuel.” Who said it: Jason Wesbecher CEO of Handshakez in an interview in AllThingsDigital In Context: The CEO of Handshakez, a salesforce productivity web software startup, just raised a first round of venture capital to finance the growth of the business. Its software attracted VC because of its traction in the market. it has already signed up several big names in IT, such as Corel and WinZip, while eference customers have noted remarkable results from using the application, which “moves interaction between customers and businesses out of the normal channels like email and into a private collaborative space on the Web”, such as a 45% increase in deal size and a reduction of data entry time. Every interaction is measured and assigned a value that gets reinterpreted as a “temperature.” The values are then shared within Salesforce.com and create an additional signal on the status of the customer relationship. It is an enhancement to lead‐scoring and solves reporting issues. People on sales teams might underreport the nature of their relationship with the customer, or they might make it look better than it is.
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