Cinco de Mayo has become a holiday to celebrate the Mexican culture in the United States, driven by the importer in Texas of Corona and Grupo Modelo beers. A successful campaign: more beer is drunk on this date than on St. Patrick’s Day or the Superbowl.
In Mexico, Cinco de Mayo is a celebration that has taken a back seat, although it commemorates one of the few battles won by the Mexican army against an invading army, having almost all the factors against it.
Like Mexican soldiers in 1862, Mexican startups have also had to undertake in an adverse environment. Mexican SMEs have one of the highest failure rates in the world, and in recent years Mexico has fallen into the ranking of the Doing Business report, which measures the ease of doing business by country.
Despite the numbers against, these five Mexican startups have managed to innovate in recent years, raise venture capital and expand to other countries.
Clip
Clip is a Mexican startup founded in 2013 by Adolfo Babatz and Vilash Poovala. This company seeks to solve the problem that many businesses have to accept card payments when converting any cell phone into a payment terminal. Since its foundation, the number of clients has grown exponentially, and last year they presented a new product. The company has received capital from Angel Ventures, Dalus Capital and 500 Startups. This year Clip will seek additional founding.
Kueski
Kueski is a micro-lending platform, founded in 2013 by Adalberto Flores and Leonardo de la Cerda. The entrepreneurs saw an area of opportunity in Mexico when they observed that very few credits were granted in the country. People apply online, and money is deposited in less than two hours.
Tumbiko
Tumbiko is an e-commerce of Mexican artisan jewelry, founded by Victor and Aldo Uribe, both of Taxco. When seeing that many artisans were leaving their work, they decided to connect them with designers to maintain the tradition of the jewelry that has characterized this town of Guerrero.
Luuna
Luuna is a mattress company that has taken advantage of e-commerce to deliver mattresses without springs at an affordable price. The cushions are packed in high vacuum and shipped to any part of Mexico from the factory in Monterrey.
Kichinik
Kichinik is an e-commerce platform that offers Mexican entrepreneurs everything they need to start their online business. Kichinik was founded by Claudia de Heredia and was chosen in 2015 by Google on Demo Day.