Receiving a $15 million dollar investment: what does it mean to us.

Over the past few months, at Yalo we have had our mission more present than ever: Building a platform that enables enterprises to digitally engage and delight their customers, making the day for 1 billion people. We’ve always known that our technology has the power to make people’s life better, and during this pandemic we have seen it again and again. We donated our technology to the governments of Mexico and Colombia, so they could handle the spike in demand for healthcare by advising and even providing COVID diagnosing to their citizens in an easier, faster, and safer way through WhatsApp. We have also worked along with our customers to help them adapt to this new reality in record time, which led to thousands of saved jobs. 

Five years ago, we created Yalo with the conviction that we could help companies thrive through conversational technology. We knew that there were millions of users around the world connecting with their friends and families via messaging apps, and that it was time for companies to serve them on the channels they were already using. People don’t want to download and learn how to use yet another app; in emerging markets, 70% of apps are uninstalled or not used 2 months after being downloaded. But people spend more than 84% of their smartphone usage time on messaging apps. Even then, enterprises were still spending millions of dollars on solutions like Salesforce with few results or with very long implementation times. Thus we wanted to cover the gap that these traditional CRM companies left, by making software more human and allowing companies to interact with their users easily through messaging apps like WhatsApp.

But we had another and more personal goal: to build a global software company to come out of emerging markets, proving that great technology can be developed anywhere. We come from emerging markets, our team knows emerging markets and understands their challenges and strengths, and we wanted to show the world that we can create technology that improves people’s lives and helps solve many critical problems that our regions face. For decades we’ve been importing the technology, it's time to start creating it and exporting it. 

This is  why Yalo was created, and 5 years later we are excited to see that we were right: we’ve been able to grow, work with amazing customers  transforming their businesses and build a passionate, committed and extraordinarily talented team. We are very proud to announce that we have raised $15 million in Series B funding, led by B Capital Group and with participation from Sierra Ventures. 

Raising this capital proves our hypothesis and having Sierra Ventures investing again, shows that we are on the right track. And of course, being B Capital Group's first COVID investment and the first one our region, allows us to keep saying to the world: the emerging markets are going to change the world. 

Our investors believe in us, not only for what we do and the customers that we have, but for our most important asset: our team. Since the start, one of my main goals was to build the best environment for everyone to be able to make the best creations of our lives. Today, one of the things I’m most proud of is to be surrounded by smart, talented and prepared people from all over the world. And that those people chose Yalo as the place for them to not only learn, have fun and grow, but as the playground to explore and dare to do amazing things that have a global repercussion. We are a dream machine and as we grow we enable our team and our customers to achieve their dreams.

What we are most excited about it's not the capital that we raised. We know it's important and it will allow us to continue expanding and consolidating our efforts in Latam, particularly Brazil and India. What we’re really excited about is the access this investment brings us to strategic partners like Eduardo Saverin, B Capital Group co-founder and managing partner also known for co-founding Facebook, and Adam Bosworth, CRM veteran and former Vice President at Google, Salesforce, and Amazon. 

What's next? Keep working, keep trusting our instincts and our belief that nobody understands the emerging markets like the companies that come from them. We’ll continue disrupting and empowering companies to rebel against the old tech ideas and products, by welcoming them into a truly consumer-focused way to do business. And above all, we’ll continue putting all our energy into making the day of our clients, their users and every member of our team.