Mexico’s economic development — turbocharged by the amount of nearshoring in recent years — has made it fertile ground for startups. But the trend is under threat if President-elect Donald Trump follows through with his idea of taking a harder line on trade with Mexico.
Jaime Tabachnik, co-founder and CEO of Mexican trucking finance startup Solvento, isn’t too worried, though. “Mexico is the best trade partner, geographically, economically, logistically” to the U.S., he told TechCrunch in a recent interview. But even if the relationship sours, he said, Mexico’s growing economy is big enough for his company to grow.
“The market intra-Mexico, and with our ports, is still big enough for us to build something very big and gigantic,” he said. “We definitely are cheering for an incredible trade partnership between the U.S. and Mexico and [for] that to continue thriving, because it’s an incredible tailwind for us, but we’re not dependent upon it to thrive.”
Tabachnik shared this perspective as his company closed its $12.5 million Series A funding round, which was led by venture capital firm Cometa, and included existing investors like Austin, Texas-based Ironspring Ventures.
The firm, founded in 2021, provides modern financial services to trucking companies in Mexico, often taking the place of more unsavory lenders that small Mexican businesses have had to rely on in the past, Tabachnik said. Solvento offers invoice financing, automated payments, and its products in general increase transparency and liquidity in the trucking sector, he said.
Solvento hopes to use the funding to grow from a current customer base of around 500 carriers to 5,000 by the end of 2025, Tabachnik said. Scale is key because Tabachnik said he thinks this financial slice of the transportation market is a “winner takes most” situation.
“We need to move fast,” he said.
Along that growth path, Tabachnik said he wants to add new products like fuel cards and start extending credit to companies to buy trucks. It’s also launching a freight insights platform that leverages the millions of invoices it has handled to date, which shippers and carriers can use to compare trucking rates across the country.
To do some of this, Tabachnik said Solvento has been winning over some of the banks that were previously hesitant to embrace this market, and is striking partnerships with newcomers to Mexico like Uber Freight.
“If we help [customers] add new assets and more trucks to their fleets, that is just going to help them generate more revenue, more invoices are going to be further discounted, they’re going to consume more fuel. So getting this flywheel starting to spin, in addition to scaling the core offering, is what we believe is the setup in an incredible position for our Series B,” he said.
“We are living in an era where I think the word nearshoring has been the most featured buzz word in the past year or two, right?” Tabachnik said. “But it’s real.”