MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: Fintech Dinie of Brazil Raises $24m in Equity, Debt to Boost In-house API, Capacity, Securitization

Dinie, a financial technology (fintech) lender in Brazil, recently raised USD 3.8 million in a seed funding round led by Accion Venture Lab – a unit of US-based nonprofit Accion – and US-based investment firm K50 Ventures. The other participants were Capital Lab and Domo Invest of Brazil, Flourish Ventures and Tribe Capital of the US, and multiple individual investors. Separately, Dinie received USD 20 million in debt financing from Brazil-based Empirica Investimentos to complete a pending securitization.

Dinie plans to use the fresh capital to “accelerate the company’s end-to-end embedded credit infrastructure and further expose its application programming interfaces (APIs) to Brazil’s largest e-commerce platforms.” Dinie builds its products into third-party online platforms that service micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). These products include overdraft, risk management and capital market services; payment solutions; and a buy-now-pay-later product called DiniePay. Dinie’s third-party partners include MovilePay’s iFood, a banking platform for restaurants; dLocal, a payment platform; and Elo7, an online marketplace. Dinie uses these platforms’ data to evaluate MSME’s requests for credit and adjust their credit lines based on factors such as recent cash flow.

Accion CEO Michael Schlein said, “Affordable credit is essential for small businesses to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in the hardest-hit countries like Brazil. Dinie is embedding credit offerings in platforms that small business owners already use to provide entrepreneurs with the financing they need to keep their doors open and provide for their families.”

Originally developed in Germany in 2018, Dinie was launched in 2019 in Sao Paulo. By late 2020, it had disbursed approximately 1,500 loans. With its new funding, the firm plans to reach a total of 15,000 MSMEs.

Accion created Accion Venture Lab in 2011 to serve as its “seed-stage investment arm.” The mission of the investment vehicle is to support “technology and [other] new approaches that help underserved people and small businesses benefit from the world’s formal economy.” It typically invests USD 500,000 in early-stage startups. As of 2020, the majority of Accion Venture Lab’s 38 investees are active in microfinance and financial technology (fintech). Its parent entity, Accion, is a nonprofit that seeks to alleviate poverty by offering services such as microenterprise loans and business training. As of 2021, Accion has approximately 160 partners in 55 countries across Africa, the Americas and Asia.

Since its founding in 2016, K50 Ventures, which is based in New York City, has invested in 140 firms across the US and in various developing countries with the goal of making “health, education, finance and housing more affordable, accessible and sustainable.” It provides pre-seed and seed investments in amounts up to USD 250,000.

Founded in 2009, Empirica Investimentos is an investment management firm headquartered in Sao Paulo. It specializes in credit rights investment funds and also provides services in private and structured credit, real estate receivables, capital markets, and securitization. As of 2021, it manages 38 credit funds with a total volume of BRL 3.4 billion (USD 654 million).

By Sophie Fiala, Research Associate

Sources and Additional Resources

Accion press release
https://www.accion.org/dinie-brazils-pioneer-api-first-embedded-lending-fintech-raises-usd-3-8-million-seed-round

Dinie homepage
https://www.dinie.com/

Crunchbase profile on Dinie
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/dinie/company_financials

Accion homepage
https://www.accion.org/

Capital Lab homepage
https://capitallab.com.br/

dLocal homepage
https://dlocal.com/

Domo Investors homepage
https://www.domoinvestors.com/

Elo7 homepage
https://www.elo7.com.br/

Empirica Investimentos homepage
https://empirica.com.br/

Endeavor homepage
https://endeavor.org.br/