05 April 2016
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It is always great news when a Latin American start-up succeeds in attracting Silicon Valley’s VC money, and even more when one gets selected by the prestigious accelerator Y Combinator.
Y Combinator for those of you who do not know is a mega-famous start-up incubator company and seed fund which has supported and invested in Dropbox, AirbnB, Reddit, Stripe, Instacart, among others.
Y-Combinator so far has only supported 10 Latin Americans start-ups, the latest being RAPPI. I am happy for what this means for the Latam start-up scene, but also very proud because one of the founders, Guillermo Plaza, used to work at Adsmovil and left to start this.
So what is RAPPI?
RAPPI is a combination between Instacart and Postmates. Its value proposition is simple: it enables consumers to get home delivery of any product by connecting people who want to make money delivering products with those who need home delivery service. In its site, you can choose to get food delivery from partner restaurants and also order products from partner grocery chains. But you can also order any product to be home delivered, be it from a pharmacy, your favorite restaurant, your dry cleaning service, etc. As a marketplace, the people providing the deliveries are not employees but individual contractors who use the platform to connect with customers.
RAPPI, founded last July in Bogota, is in Colombia and Mexico, with 90 and 30 employees respectively. The results so far have been impressive: 200,000 orders last month and growing 10%-15% monthly. It plans to launch in Argentina this year. Rappi also claims it can be profitable in one area only 25 days after launch.
We wish Rappi a lot of success and is great to see Latin American entrepreneurs gaining the attention of the “big Silicon Valley players”.
