Leal豪赌：现金购物者也能被追踪：疫情让85%的商家消失，随后用户达到600万

做的是什么生意

A Bogotá-based retail-tech platform that gives LatAm merchants cashback and loyalty programs with 160 POS integrations, letting them track even cash-paying customers and run targeted campaigns.

启动资金：$20.5M total: $3M in 2019, a $10M Series A in 2022, and a $5M pre-Series B co-led by LEAP Global Partners and Rakuten Capital (Jan 2024)

起因

Camilo Martinez founded Leal in Bogotá in 2016 with COO Florence Frech, betting that merchants wanted to understand customers who pay cash. The company grew fast, then COVID lockdowns hit: 'We lost 85% of our merchants,' Martinez said. 'We were heavily reliant on brick-and-mortar retailers... We almost had to rebuild our business from 2021 onwards because we had no clients.'

经过

After rebuilding, Leal launched receipt-scanning rewards in 2021 that let grocery shoppers earn Leal Coins redeemable for goods like gasoline or food delivery, expanded across Mexico, Colombia and Central America, and raised a $10M Series A (2022) and a $5M pre-Series B co-led by LEAP Global Partners and Rakuten Capital (Jan 2024) to invest in AI personalization and conversational commerce on WhatsApp and Messenger.

结果

Scaling: 6M+ users, 1,000+ brands across 15 industries in 8 countries, targeting $10M in annual recurring revenue, with AI-driven personalization as the next growth lever.

可借鉴之处

单一渠道的分发是脆弱的：Leal依赖实体零售，因此封锁导致其85%的商家消失；生存之道在于将无法追踪的现金购物转化为收据扫描数据。