Mexican unicorn Clara bags $90 million in debt financing amid Brazil expansion

By Gabriel Araujo

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Mexican unicorn Clara has secured $90 million in fresh debt funding led by U.S. debt provider Accial Capital, the company announced on Monday, as it looks to boost its Brazil expansion.

The funds will be concentrated in helping Clara, which offers corporate credit cards and expense management solutions, increase its footprint in Latin America’s largest economy, where it wants to more than double its customer base.

“We’ve been in the Brazilian market for over a year and we see the operation continues to grow even faster than the operation in Mexico did initially,” Clara’s Chief Executive Gerry Giacoman told Reuters.

The company, which also operates in Colombia and is now valued at over $1 billion, says Brazil is on track to become its largest operation by the end of 2024.

Aiming to get its customer base in Brazil up to 5,000 companies from 2,000, Clara expects to quadruple the 600 million reais ($114.98 million) processed on its corporate cards last year, according to the firm.

The new funding marks the second debt facility secured in less than a year by Clara, having announced a $150 million debt line from Goldman Sachs (NYSE:) in August 2022.

“It is important to have the right combination, the right mix of capital,” Giacoman said about Clara’s recent bet on debt financing over new equity rounds, having previously raised capital from funds such as Coatue and monashees.

The executive noted the move allowed the firm to separate money used to increase liquidity solutions for customers from that used to invest in team and products. But he did not rule out new announcements on the equity side in the future as well.

($1 = 5.2181 reais)