- Flourish lets the user understand their spending habits, their expenditure, and savings.
- A Brazil-based company called Canary backs up the funding rounds for the startup.
Introduction:
It is very common to see how US-based investors back Latin-American startups. But it is rare to see Latin-American VCs invest in US-based startups. Berkeley-based fintech company Flourish raised $1.5 million in a funding round which was led by Brazil-based company called Canary. Pedro Moura and Jessica Eting are the founders of Flourish. They have come up with the idea of providing an “engagement and wellness” solution for banks, fintech, and credit unions. The aim behind this is to help the companies retain and engage their clients.
Participants of the funding rounds:
Xochi Ventures, First Check Ventures, Magma Capital and GV Angels as well as strategic angels including Rodrigo Xavier, Beth Stelluto, Gustavo Lasala, and Brian Requarth are the participants of the funding rounds. Rodrigo Xavier happens to be the former American CEO of Bank of America in Brazil, Beth Stelluto is the former CEO of Schwab, Gustavo Lasala happens to be the president and CEO of The People Fund and Requarth is the founder of Viva Real.
Flourish, which has clients based in the US, Bolivia, and Brazil, offer a solution that features three modules:
- Rewards engine that incentivizes the users to save or invest their money.
- An intelligence-based automatic micro-savings feature where users are allowed to create personalized rules (like transferring $15 in the rainy day fund every time the team of their choice wins the sports).
- The financial knowledge module that offers the financial transactions and patterns of expenses is converted into a question and answer game.
In the US, Flourish tested end-user mechanics with organizations such as CommonWealth and Opportunity Fund. It can integrate with banks using an SDK or API. It has also licensed the engagement technology to banks, retailers, and Fintech all over America. Flourish has piloted or licensed its solution to U.S.-based credit unions, Sicoob (Brazil’s largest credit union), and BancoSol in Bolivia.
Future plans:
The startup earns money on the basis of a partnership model which heavily concentrates on user activation and engagement. Moura and Eting bonded on their mission to build a business that empowered people to build positive money habits and help them understand everything about their finances.
An 11-people team works outside of the US, Mexico, and Brazil and plans to build up customers in Latin America. Also, this will entail increased recruitment and introduce new functionalities for Flourish. In particular, Flourish aims to focus next on the Brazilian market. It also plans to scale its operations in a few select countries in America.
“There are three things that make Latin America, and more specifically Brazil, attractive to us at this moment,” Moura said. “Currently, the B2B financial technology market is still in its nascency. This combined with open banking regulation and the need for more responsible products provides Flourish a unique opportunity in Brazil.”
