Aviva, a Mexican "phygital" financial platform for the underbanked and micro businesses, has raised $5.5 million in seed funding.
Krealo, the corporate VC of Credicorp, Ignia Partners, Carao Ventures, Rainforest Capital, DCG, Wollef, Newtopia, 500 Global, and Magna VC joined Mexico's biggest seed stage round of the year.
Founded in 2022, Aviva is combining the physical with the digital (phygital) to target the more than 70 million Mexicans primarily living in cities of less than 500,000. This market is characterised by informal labour and heavy cash use and, claims the startup, represents an opportunity of over $150 billion in lending assets.
Aviva offers 100% conversation-based loan applications that use natural language processing and computer vision. At micro-sized bank branches, customers receive real-time approvals after a bot-powered seven-minute video call.
Currently, Aviva operates in 26 cities, where 90% of their clients work in the informal sector. More than 50,000 potential clients have already gone through their phygital onboarding experience.
The new investment will be used to build out Aviva's product suite, its partnership distribution model, and its network of kiosks in medium and small cities. By the end of the year, it plans to expand to over 50 cities.
Filiberto Castro, Co-CEO, Aviva, says: "Despite countless attempts by fintechs and neobanks, the smartphone is not a one-size-fits-all solution for providing financial services, a non-conventional strategy is critical.
"We have proven that our phygital strategy is essential to reaching those who most benefit from access to financial services and who have paradoxically been excluded from the formal financial system."