latam-startups
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The Fund That Bets on Boring: Predictive Hunts Data Moats in the Industries AI Forgot
While most AI money chases chatbots, Kevin Alvarez-Fung is writing seed checks into freight, factories and payments - and handing founders a rolodex of 500 corporations to prove it works.
Ythalo Silva
Ythalo Silva is the co-founder and CEO of Vobi, a Y Combinator-backed (W22) project and construction management platform built for small construction businesses across Latin America. He turned a struggling home-renovation marketplace called HomeHero into a SaaS product that helps contractors, architects, and remodelers cut manual budgeting and procurement work in half. A serial founder out of the MAR Ventures venture builder, he previously co-founded Modiax, acquired by Foxbit in 2019.
Deepak Chhugani
Deepak Chhugani is the founder and CEO of Nuvocargo, an AI-powered platform for cross-border truckload freight between the United States and Mexico. Born in Kenya to Indian parents and raised in Ecuador, he worked on Latin America M&A deals at Bank of America Merrill Lynch before starting Nuvocargo in 2019. The company has raised more than $75 million from investors including Y Combinator, Tiger Global, QED, and NFX, and combines freight forwarding, customs brokerage, cargo insurance, and financing on one platform. Chhugani was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for enterprise technology in 2023 and is an Endeavor Entrepreneur.
Gabriela Tafur
Gabriela Tafur is a Colombian lawyer, former Miss Colombia and Miss Universe top-five finalist turned tech founder. As CEO and co-founder of Idilio TV, she built Latin America's first vertical microdrama streaming platform after spotting nail-salon workers binge-watching Chinese micro-dramas during her Stanford MBA. In June 2026 Idilio raised a $5.5M seed round backed by Jeffrey Katzenberg's WndrCo, a16z Speedrun, Goodwater Capital and Nubank founder David Velez, after reaching 1.5 million downloads across 93 countries in five months.