The Mexico City branch of 500 Startups has picked the next group of Latin American companies that will go through its Accelerator program. This time around, for its third batch, there will be 17 companies participating in the five-month program, which seeks to help companies south of the border to improve their products and distribution.
500 Startups is no stranger to investing in international companies. 500 Mexico City is an extension of 500 Startups’ acquisition of Latin American accelerator Mexico.VC. The accelerator will also likely be at least partially funded by a $5 million micro-fund that the venture firm is raising for investments in the region.
For the third batch of startups that have entered the accelerator, 17 companies were chosen. That is five percent of the number that applied through AngelList. Those participating in the five-month program include representatives from 20 different Latin American cities, including Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Mexico City, and Santiago de Chile.
Participants will spend the program sharing a coworking space and work with the Accelerator team on distribution, product, and fundraising. They’ll also have weekly meetings with a network of more than 200 networks both on site and remotely.
The 17 startups include:
- 99 Minutos – a platform to ship anywhere within Mexico City in under 99 minutes
- Aiotra – a curated community of video producers for brands
- Auto Chilango – a driving app with traffic alerts, insurance management, and other vital information for drivers in Mexico City
- Cotiza & Contrata – a platform connecting users with service professionals
- Facturama – simplifies a company’s billing process through consolidating receipts, reports, and more
- FirstJob – a marketplace to help young professionals in Latin America enter the job market
- Fullbox – connect people who need temporarily furnishings with people who have extra
- Growlers – a site for ordering domestic and imported beers that are delivered to your door
- Geniously – a tool for SMBs to assess and minimize shipment risks
- Liichi – provides behavior analytics for the offline world
- Novelistik – a tool enabling users to easily publish interactive e-books
- Nubity – a platform that integrates public and private cloud services such as Amazon AWS, Rackspace, and Softlayer
- Obzes – an online store that specializes in beauty products
- Rocket – enables users to asses and organize their personal finances online
- Soukboard – an intelligent assistant that helps online stores with sales and marketing
- Survmetrics – a way to create interactive surveys, and then use georeferencing and visualization tools to analyze results
- Wavestack – an online tool that facilitates musical collaboration between artists from anywhere around the world