Frubana
“Can a B2B food-supply marketplace become the financial and operational backbone for LATAM's micro and small restaurant sector by embedding credit and working capital into the procurement workflow?”
Founded in 2018 as a B2B food supply marketplace connecting LATAM restaurants with smallholder farmers and suppliers across Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil. The company scaled rapidly through Y Combinator backing and $271M in funding, operating across three countries. By 2024, Frubana refocused exclusively on Brazil, where it identified working capital access as the central pain point for its 90,000+ restaurant customers. The embedded financing partnership with Accion and Mastercard in 2025 marks a strategic expansion from pure logistics/supply into fintech — using alternative ML-based credit scoring to extend vendor financing to underserved MSEs.