MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Record level of funding for Argentine startup companies despite pandemic

Only 6% of these companies have a female CEO

Argentine startup companies have obtained a record level of funding during the first semester of 2021, a study has shown.

A total of 45 operations have involved investments worth US $ 210.7 million, five times more than in the same period of 2020, according to the “Study of the private equity, entrepreneur and seed industry in Argentina”, carried out by the Argentine Association of Private Capital, Entrepreneur and Seed (Arcap) and the Microsoft program “Microsoft for Startups”.

The report also highlighted it was the best first semester surveyed so far in the last five years. The study also revealed that “despite the difficult and challenging times the world is going through, the industry continues to be active and the good performance of 2020 and this semester, even with global uncertainty, reaffirms that it presents a significant degree of” evolution.

Regarding the profiles of the companies that received the most investments, those belonging to biotechnology, enterprise software, agtech and fintech stand out. In addition, edtech and healthtech are gaining momentum as new business trends.

Overall, 13.3% of the disbursements were executed by Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) funds, which contributed US $ 2 million.

In the first half of 2021, 27 seed capital transactions were registered, representing 60% of the total. Although there is a decrease in the number of operations (versus 32 in the previous same period), the amount invested (US $ 9.8 million) went up 34%.

With these rounds of financing, which move between US $ 25,000 and US $ 1 million, entrepreneurs go out to the market to validate their proposals, test the response of clients and, in some cases, expand nationally.

Regarding transactions related to entrepreneurial capital, of more than US $ 1 million, the growth has been sustained since 2016.

In 2020, the trend continued. And in the first half of this year, 18 operations were registered (40% of the total), which represents a rise of 63.6% year-on-year. US $ 201 million were invested in them.

Geographically, 66.9% of the startups that received capital carry out their activities in the City of Buenos Aires, while 12.1% do so in Córdoba, 6.1% in Santa Fe, 6.1% % in Mendoza and 6.1% in the province of Buenos Aires. 72.7% offer business-to-business (B2B) products or services and 27.3% market them through the business-to-consumer (B2C) channel.

Despite progress in this area, the gender gap remains in management positions. While 79% of these companies were created by men, only 3% were founded by women. The remaining 18% were devised by a mixed team. In turn, only 6% have a female CEO.