Is WhatsApp the Operating System of LATAM?

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From building a digital catering business that ended up generating over $200k dollars during the pandemic to now generating well over $1.5m ARR from over 2k customers.?

The story of Leadsales is remarkable.

Entrepreneur Bloodlines

The idea of being an entrepreneur was clear to Roberto Pe?acastro Ortega, co-founder of Leadsales, from an early age.?

“My mother has been the source of inspiration, she was one of the first software engineers in Mexico. Worked at IBM and started her own company before having me and my brothers. During my childhood I saw her venture into many businesses and I wanted to do the same.” - Roberto Pe?acastro Ortega, Co Founder of Leadsales.

Upon entering University, Roby's entrepreneurial emphasis started to emerge with a focus on logistics and the opportunities for cross border trade between Asia and the Mexico, but then his focus on software blossomed leading him to land a job at Google with a focus on how SMB's can better utilize Google Ads, however this was just the beginning.

Aha Moment

It was 2020, in the midst of the Covid 19 pandemic and the acceleration of digitization was occurring across all industries. At the time, Roby had a small catering company and business came to halt. The demand for in person events plummeted, leading Roby with no other choice to start hosting live virtual events. After initially hosting a few in-person events and developing a modest booking system for bartenders to organize their own virtual gatherings, the realization emerged that their software had broader applications. Multiple businesses seeking to streamline their sales processes could benefit from this technology.

The solution for SME's

It is no mystery that customer engagement is critical for businesses wanting to stay ahead of the competition, particularly SMEs. The challenges arise for SMEs when technological innovations are too complex or too costly, thus leading to many SMEs in Latin America managing customer engagement and sales inefficiently across multiple platforms, such as Whatsapp and facebook.

Whatsapp, with over 100m users in Brazil and another 62m users in Mexico, seemed to be a good place to start. (backlinko)

Enter Leadsales.

Leadsales, is WhatsApp CRM that is transforming the way companies in Mexico manage customer conversations. Leadsales is more than just a messaging platform; it's a comprehensive customer relationship management (CRM) solution customized to meet the specific requirements of LATAM businesses.

“Leadsales is a Conversational Commerce Platform which focuses on helping businesses scale their messaging operations within WhatsApp and Social media. It is customizable and focused on providing excellent tracking of current and potential customers, sales, and support.” - Roberto Pe?acastro Ortega

Leadsales offers a solution that centralizes customer conversations across multiple platforms, ensuring that no valuable sales opportunity goes unnoticed. Further, a recent study showed that 80% of users of whatsapp prefer to communicate with businesses through whatsapp because of the speed of response (businessinsider).

“Being a software, which was built to solve a real problem for the family business it was an instant hit for other businesses when we launched it as an open platform for businesses to scale their WhatsApp operations. Quickly gaining customers from the very first day we launched our ad campaigns and the growth has never stopped since 2020” -Roberto Pe?acastro Ortega

Founders

Roberto Pe?acastro Ortega

David Villa

Funding

Leadsales has raised a total funding amount of $4.3M.

2023, $3.7M (Seed), including Ulu Ventures and BluePointe Ventures.

2022, $400K (Pre-seed), including Cross Ocean Ventures, Angel Hub, Ulu Ventures, Ganas Ventures.

Market Opportunity

In Mexico alone there are over 5m small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs).

However, several of these businesses can't afford multi-tiered tech stacks. Leadsales' affordable and effective solution provides SMEs with a simple CRM and sales funnel. In 2023, retail transactions through e-commerce platforms are expected to double to 28% (enfoquenoticias). Moreover, Gross sales of the e-commerce market in Latin America is projected to grow from 68B dollars in 2020 to 168B dollars by 2025 (mexicobusiness).

According to Findstack, The Latin American CRM market is expected to increase at an annual growth rate of 4.8% and in 2021, it was valued at approximately USD $10.4 billion.

Leadsales is well positioned in the market to take advantage of these market trends and continue to grow to be a leading provider of CRM e-commerce solutions for SMEs in the foreseeable future.

Advice to Aspiring Entrepreneurs

"Read, Read, Read... so much of what has inspired my vision and guided the way I have built Leadsales is through reading, one book that I recommend is Culture Code by Daniel Coyle." Roberto Pe?acastro Ortega

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