Supplying Connections
How Inventa’s B2B Marketplace is Transforming LatAm Retail
There are millions of entrepreneurs running small retail businesses in Latin America. While they may differ in the types of products sold or specific customers they target, the challenges they face in everyday operations are common. From low credit card penetration to poor visibility into shipping logistics and pricing, the various difficulties often boil down to a singular issue: lack of data.
Brazil-based Inventa has been working to change that. The company’s digital marketplace steps in to fill the gaps left by the outdated modes of phone calls, paper catalogs, and in-person trade shows where much of LatAm retail commerce takes place. Inventa provides a connection point between suppliers and small and medium retailers – creating visibility for both sides – while also extending credit terms to retailers. Retailers can discover and purchase inventory, and suppliers can easily put up products for sale and monitor sales performance.
“The problems are more basic, but the opportunity is bigger because proportionally this part of the economy represents a much, much larger percentage than would be in the U.S. or Europe,” says Inventa CEO Marcos Salama, who co-founded the company in 2021. Greylock has been partnered with Inventa since their 2022 Series A round, and the firm led the company’s Series B round.
Salama says the company’s strong emphasis on data infrastructure from the outset guided them to focus on suppliers as a mechanism for customer growth. Suppliers bring with them key information about what their retailers are buying, which in turn enables Inventa to recommend similar brands to suppliers to carry. That referral loop has become the digital hub for an ecosystem previously based only on offline transactions, and Inventa has quickly gained traction across Brazil and is expanding into other parts of Latin America.
Salama joined me on the Greymatter podcast to discuss Inventa’s data-driven strategy and its rapid growth, the commerce environment in Latin America, and the broader B2B ecosystem.
You can listen to the interview at the link below or wherever you get your podcasts.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Mike Duboe :
Hi everyone. Welcome to Greymatter. I’m excited today to have Marcos Salama, CEO of Inventa. Marcos is an old friend and someone who we’ve been fortunate to work with at Greylock for the better part of a year.
As context, Inventa is the leading B2B marketplace in Brazil, focused on connecting small retailers with suppliers in Latin America more broadly. Marcos previously was an exec at Rappi and prior to that was at McKinsey. Marco and I first got to know each other when we were students about a decade ago. So I’ve had a long journey and it’s been a real honor to watch you grow over the years, Marcos. So thanks for having this conversation. Welcome.
Marcos Salama:
Super happy to be here, Mike. Thanks for inviting me.
MD:
Yeah. So just jumping into it, we want to spend a lot of time today on Inventa, but more broadly on B2B marketplaces, as well as the nuances of building a high growth startup in LatAm. To get started and set the foundation here, tell us a bit about the founding story behind Inventa and the broader vision around the company.
MS:
For sure. So I come from a family of entrepreneurs and I always had a dream to start a business and to have an impact. And that was what fueled that idea of finding something to solve, finding an idea.
In the past before we met, I actually lived in Europe, I lived in Asia, then we met in San Francisco while at Stanford, but I had a unique view of different places around the world. Europe, Asia, San Francisco. And when I traveled to LatAm I saw that a lot of things that were supposed to happen in the U.S. were not happening in LatAm.
Getting to Inventa now: we set up [co-founder] Fernando [Carrasco] and I, not even two years ago, and we had the dream of helping millions of entrepreneurs thrive. And when we went to talk to friends and raise some money, we had a position that was very special. We were told we were the seventh company in Brazil trying to do this. And now looking back, this was a blessing in disguise. Because of that, we had to be super scrappy, super fast and we built a culture around fast execution, built a culture around getting out to the client first. And that was what kind of bred that fire of Inventa at the beginning.
MD:
Go back to your time at Rappi (and by now it’s pretty widely regarded as a great success story in LatAm). What were some of the insights there or even operating disciplines that you wanted to bring over to Inventa, and I guess essentially what did you learn and want to take from that?
MS:
I mean, I joined Rappi maybe in 2017. It was a small startup in Colombia. I think its Mexico [office] had just opened. And the culture there and the values and execution around putting the customer first, and speed of execution was what really mattered as a company was amazing and contagious. Every senior leader there understood perfectly what they needed to do and why it mattered. We weren’t working to sell more. We were working because we thought hundreds of thousands or even millions of people could have a second income. And that was a clear sense of mission. And you put that together with an obsessive execution or pace of implementation, then you get something wonderful.
That’s something I tried to try to bring over to Inventa because this speed to execution allows you to be wrong really fast and then correct. And that’s something we learned at Rappi. We did a lot of experiments and made a lot of mistakes, but because we were always pushing to be faster, pushing to try things out, we also did a lot of things right because we were able to test a lot.
When I think about Inventa, one of the best things I bring over from my time at Rappi is that obsessive and relentless speed of execution, putting the customer first and trying to iterate and do what’s best for them.