VARIV Capital led a US$1.8m investment in Yotepresto, a Guadalajara-based consumer lending marketplace, with participation from Redwood Ventures, Tonk Capital and unnamed angels.

(Press Release) VARIV Capital led Yotepresto.com‘s latest $1.8M USD round. Redwood Ventures, Tonk Capital and several incumbent angel investors also participated in the financing. The company will use the proceeds to scale its operations, and to develop new generation financial products and services.

Yotepresto.com is an online lending marketplace that connects borrowers with retail and institutional investors to crowdfund loans through their platform. By directly connecting borrowers with investors, the company is transforming the financial system, democratizing investing, and making credit more affordable. Yotepresto.com operates fully online thus keeping low operating costs.

The company offers unsecured personal installment loans. Loan applications are received through the Yotepresto.com website and are analyzed using a proprietary scoring model. Moreover, the company uses state-of-the-art underwriting to assess risk and to define interest rates for each customer. Identity and fraud checks are applied to prevent delinquency. All loans are fully serviced by the company.

Since inception in June 2015, the company has registered +500k users, and facilitated ~$270M MXN in loans, delivering consistent ~17% annual returns for +30k retail investors, and has maintained a default rate <2%, outperforming all marketplace lenders in Mexico.

Luis Rubén Chávez is co-founder and CEO of Yotepresto.com. He worked for 8 years in the financial and personal loans industry, where he served as COO and CFO for a nation-wide Mexican Micro Finance Institution (MFI). He has leveraged his experience in finance, credit risk assessment and fund management in the Mexican market to launch Yotepresto.com.