(Tech Crunch) Latin American real estate and jobs classifieds company, Navent, has announced it’s raised US$30 million in Series B funding from global technology private equity firm Riverwood Capital and global internet investor Tiger Global Management, also a controlling shareholder of the company.
Navent said the new funding will be used for continued expansion of key regional properties — including Brazil’s Imovelweb, Latin America’s Bumeran and Mexico’s Mercadoi. Other web properties it will focus on with the new funding include Peru’s AdondeVivir and Ecuador’s Plusvalia. More generally it says it wants to consolidate its position in the Latin American market.
Navent CEO Nicolás Tejerina noted that the company is looking to capitalise on a regional rise in internet penetration. “As internet penetration in Latin America increases, the method for obtaining information and acquiring either a job or a piece of real estate will increasingly shift to an online experience,” he said in a statement. “This additional capital will help us take advantage of this opportunity and accelerate the implementation of our growth strategies. In the coming years we plan to continue rolling out new products and features, expand geographically, and consolidate our leadership position in key markets.”
The company’s websites have more than 16 million monthly unique visitors, and more than 55,000 companies use its services across the 13 countries where it operates: Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Uruguay, Peru, Venezuela, Panama, Ecuador, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Bolivia. Navent said its “flagship” jobs site, Bumeran, is continuing to see rapid growth in user numbers and engagement — with approximately 5 million unique users per month and more than 50,000 job listings published by more than 15,000 companies.
It also notes its Brazilian real estate site ImmovelWeb has also seen “substantial growth” in its user base and engagement — noting that it has approximately 2.5 million unique users per month, more than 300,000 listings and more than 7,000 real estate professionals registered as active users.
Francisco Alvarez Demalde, Founding Partner of Riverwood Capital, said in a statement: “We are very excited about joining Navent, its team, and Tiger Global in this next phase of growth. We are impressed with the quality and market leadership position of the Navent properties, and believe there is a huge untapped opportunity ahead of us as more customers use the web to buy or sell a home, or look for a job.”