Kanastra, a capital markets infrastructure fintech in Brazil, is today announcing a $13 million seed round investment, one of the largest at this stage in Latin America.
The investment was co-led by Valor Capital and Quona Capital, alongside QED Investors, Actyus, Collaborative, Crestone, Grão, Endeavor, Clocktower, Latitud, and Norte. The founders of multiple Latin American companies such as Creditas, OpenCo, CERC, Guiabolso, Conta Simples and Hasdex have also participated in the round.
Founded in 2022, Kanastra simplifies debt facilities for both originators and investors by bringing to market an all-in-one, tech-driven solution. The platform streamlines and provides all services needed to set up, run and invest in debt facilities in a truly digital and automated way. The company takes care of everything from fund administration to debt issuance so originators and investors don’t have to spend time and energy with spreadsheets, complicated documents and legacy systems, enabling critical automation, data availability, modern integrations and a host of features to empower lending.
“This round will enable us to pursue our strategy of consolidating the necessary services for operating private credit funds and securitizations on a single tech platform, streamlining the journey for originators and institutional investors, making it a seamless, more efficient, and cost-effective experience”, said Gustavo Mapeli, co-founder of Kanastra.
Kanastra was created out of its founders’ own frustrations. Gustavo Mapeli, formerly of SoftBank and the Boston Consulting Group, and Manuel Netto, formerly of ZX Ventures, faced hardship in finding suitable service providers and infrastructure for their private asset investment facilities while leading Kardinal, an asset management firm in Brazil. They created a MVP and realized they could offer a solution to the market’s many problems.
“We encountered all sorts of issues in the industry, from low-quality service with poor communication to non-existent technology, which results in daily errors and limited visibility into fund data. In addition, setting up a debt facility in Brazil involves seeking various mandatory service providers - such as the fund administrator, the custodian, the bookkeeper, the securitization company - in a process that generally takes months,” added Gustavo Mapeli.
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Kanastra effectively addresses all of these challenges by empowering originators and investors through a comprehensive package that encompasses regulatory licenses, proprietary technology, extensive data analysis, and a next-level service.
“Since becoming acquainted with Kanastra, our belief in their vision has only strengthened. We are genuinely impressed with their capacity to deliver in terms of technology, product, and growth,” said Carlos Costa, a partner at Valor Capital.
“This is an enormous market with very real pain points, and we believe that Kanastra has the right approach to address this opportunity,” said Jonathan Whittle, co-founder and managing partner at Quona Capital.
The private asset market, which has experienced significantly faster growth than conventional assets globally and in Brazil, has expanded twelvefold over the past twelve years in the country. “The market has reached critical mass and is poised to continue its robust growth for many years to come. Our goal is to provide the best and most comprehensive product for those in need of private asset funds and securitizations. The proceeds from the round will be used to further scale our technology platform to offer increasingly superior services,” said Manuel Netto, co-founder of Kanastra.