Fintech Startup Arrenda Raises $26.5M To Shake Up Latin America’s Rental Market

Mexico City-based fintech platform, Arrenda, has raised $26.5 million in a pre-seed funding round of equity and debt.

The funding round, which Fasanara Capital and Kube Ventures led, also included ODX Ventures, Toehold Ventures, Wharton Fintech, Lightspeed Venture Partners Scour Fund, PRMM Inmobiliaria, and a range of angel investors.

Arrenda, founded in 2022 by Joe Merullo, is a revenue-based startup that works to provide market-specific insurance and financial products to the real estate markets and landlords of Latin America. Not only does it offer advance payments to landlords, but it also helps them advance up to a year of future lease receivables.

Morello founded the company after he received an opportunity to travel to Mexico for work. During his time there, the entrepreneur struggled to find a home, which led him to start his own business, working with the real estate markets of Latin America.

“We’ve developed the risk model that enables us to gather data through various tech points, like bank accounts, credit bureaus, tax bureaus, and criminals, to understand the risk associated with the financing,” said Joe Merullo founder of Arrenda.

“We’re going to be pursuing products for tenants. In 2023, we plan to roll out a number of products to help make rent easier for tenants as we originally did from the insurance side of things, for example, on ‘rent now pay later’ types of credit products.”

Morello hopes the funding will help the finance platform roll out its website, which currently has 900 people on the waitlist. The debt portion of the funding will go towards any loans issued, while the equity side will go towards expanding Arrend’s employee base.