By Kylie Madry
MEXICO CITY Latin American property technology startup Tuhabi is set to receive a $50 million credit line from the Inter-American Development Bank's (IDB) financing arm, which it will use to ramp up operations in Mexico, the company said Thursday.
The funds for the so-called unicorn, a startup with a valuation over $1 billion, follow a $100 million credit line from Victory Park Capital it announced last month - even as funds for startups, particularly in Latin America, are increasingly running dry.
The IDB funds "will allow (the company) to purchase more inventory" in Mexico, Tuhabi's chief financial officer, Marcos Kantt, said in an interview ahead of the announcement.
Tuhabi, which also operates in Colombia, allows customers to sell their homes online and receive payment within 10 days. The startup targets low-to-middle-class clients, it says, purchasing homes for up to 4.5 million pesos ($253,140.35) in Mexico.
"The thing people really care about is that it's simple, it's secure, and they're working with a trusted counterpart," co-founder and Chief Executive Brynne McNulty Rojas said.
In both countries, sales can be encumbered by red tape and paperwork along with irregular construction and lack of clarity into the legal history of some homes.
To price homes, Tuhabi uses a mixture of artificial intelligence and boots on the ground, McNulty Rojas said. "We do over 50,000 home pricings every single month," she added, of which more than 70% are calculated automatically.
($1 = 17.7767 Mexican pesos)
(Reporting by Kylie Madry in Mexico City; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
