Merama's LatAm brand-aggregator bet: unicorn in 12 months, $215M round in 2025

An e-commerce holding company that takes majority stakes in or launches digital consumer brands selling on marketplaces like Mercado Libre and Amazon across Latin America, then runs them with shared tech, supply chain and working capital.

Several multi-billion-dollar consumer brands would be built in Latin America, and an operator that buys and scales marketplace-native category leaders could own them.

$160M combined debt-and-equity seed and Series A, announced April 2021

Merama was incorporated in December 2020 by a team with operator pedigrees - Sujay Tyle (ex-Frontier Car Group CEO), Felipe Delgado (ex-Beetmann Energy CEO), Olivier Scialom (Petsy co-founder), Renato Andrade (McKinsey) and Guilherme Nosralla (Wildlife Studios). They reasoned that Latin America was the world's fastest-growing e-commerce region while most brands selling there were still nascent, and launched with $160M in April 2021 to buy and operate digital brands.

Funding arrived fast: a $225M Series B in September 2021 - touted as Latin America's largest at the time - at an $850M valuation, followed by a $60M follow-on in December 2021 that put Merama at $1.2B, 12 months after founding, with 180+ employees and about 20 brands in Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Peru. It began launching its own brands through an internal incubator (Merama Labs) and planned expansion into Argentina and the US. After the 2022-2023 market correction, the company consolidated: J.P. Morgan extended an $80M facility in April 2024 to refinance debt and fund portfolio growth, and Merama focused its attention on six core brands.

In April 2025 Merama closed a $215M equity-and-debt round at a valuation above $1B, drawing 3G founder Marcel Telles as a board observer alongside Advent, SoftBank, Valor, Balderton and Monashees ($45M equity), plus a $170M real-denominated revolving credit line from BTG Pactual, Citi and Itaú that refinanced the J.P. Morgan loan. CEO Sujay Tyle told Bloomberg the bet on LatAm e-commerce 'is paying off,' expecting about $100M in EBITDA for 2025 across six profitable companies, including Growth Supplements with annual revenue above $400M.

Timing: Latin America's marketplace commerce was growing fastest globally while most local brands stayed small, so the consolidation gap was real.

Unlike Thrasio and Perch, Merama bought fewer brands and aimed for one category leader per segment, keeping operations focused enough to add real value.

It raised huge capital early - unicorn status in 12 months - which funded working capital and supply-chain upgrades that pure sellers could not afford.

Discipline after the 2022-2023 correction: cutting to six core brands and refinancing debt let it reach about $100M expected EBITDA while staying above a $1B valuation.

A roll-up only works when the market under it is still growing: Merama bought few category leaders in LatAm's marketplace boom, then cut to six best brands and refinanced when capital tightened.

As of April 3, 2025, Merama was a private e-commerce holding company valued above $1B, running six core brands across Latin America after more than 20 acquisitions since 2020. Its two marquee assets were Growth Supplements, the region's largest sports-nutrition brand with annual revenue above $400M, and Mexican multi-channel retailer Mercadazo. With about $100M EBITDA expected in 2025 and a fresh $170M credit line from BTG Pactual, Citi and Itaú, CEO Sujay Tyle described the founding bet - that e-commerce would be Latin America's future - as paying off.