José Carlos Aguilar, alumnus of the Economics Undergraduate Program at ITAM, seeks to boost financial inclusion in Mexico through his fintech Palenca.
Mexico is one of the 15 biggest economies in the world, and the second biggest in Latin America. And yet, a large part of the population is in informality (El Pais, 2023). Likewise, Mexico was one of the first Latin America countries to liberalize its financial sector.
The boom of financial technologies, known as fintechs, has radically changed the access to financial services. Still, these development has not overcome the obstacle that financial inclusion represents to Mexico.
The fintech startups Mexico
These startups have created platforms with the objective of facilitate financial processes, like opening bank accounts, applying for loans, making payments, among others. We could even say that these startups are part of the solution to the financial inclusion issue in Mexico. Nevertheless, according to ENIF data, in 2021, only the 67.8% of people in Mexico had some kind of financial product (savings account, credit, insurance or a retirement savings account), which means there’s a long way to go.
This increasing need was turned into an opportunity by two young entrepreneurs: José Carlos Aguilar, alumnus of the economy undergraduate program at ITAM and Pierre Delarroqua, a French mathematician. José Carlos participated in several of the EPIC Lab’s programs, including the“2018 Entrepreneurship & Innovation Bootcamp”. In this program he learned the methodology of the “24 steps to start a successful startup”, developed at the Martin Trust Center, the MIT’s EPIC Lab, to then put it into practice.
Palenca: one step closer to financial inclusion in Mexico.
Founded in 2021, Palenca was born under the name of Vech, as a financial technology of credit for conductors and delivery men for Uber and Uber Eats. At the beginning, José Carlos and Pierre realized that offering this product in particular to this market niche, it was difficult due to the lack of tools to verify their users data, which took them to change their business model radically, meaning, pivot it.
From this point on, they focused on a B2B model (Business to Business) with a software as a service (SaaS), instead of catering to the final client. Currently, the startup offers an app programming interface (API), that allows to validate employment data needed to apply for bank loans, automobile loans and insurance. Their mission is “to build Latin America’s income bureau that allows any working person to connect their information” (Palenca, 2023).
To this date, Palenca has raised 2.6 million dollars after going through the fastest business accelerator, Y Combinator, and has operations in México, Brasil, Argentina, Perú, Colombia and Chile (Martins, 2023). Also, it was recognized this year by Forbes as one of the 100 best startups in Mexico and it’s backed by venture capital funds in USA and Latin America, such as Foundation Capital and Gilgamesh Ventures.
Undoubtedly, Palenca is a financial sector success story, that was born from Jose Carlos idea, and ITAM student, that approached the EPIC Lab as an idea, and today it’s solving one of the country’s biggest problem.
A quick tip… The most important thing is to fall in love with the problem, not the solution.
 |
Ana Cecilia Parra |
ANUNCIO
