Yalo secures USD$20 million investment and strategic partnership to lead the AI-Driven commerce revolution


  • [LatAm based] Yalo has secured an extension of its Series C round through a new $20mn investment from leading Growth Equity Firm Glisco Partners.
  • Through this investment, Yalo aims to solidify its position as a global pioneer in AI driven conversational commerce, a market exceeding $130 billion within emerging economies.
  • Yalo, which already serves over 2.6mn merchants and 100mn customers, is leading the charge by harnessing the transformative power of artificial intelligence to revolutionize the way businesses engage with their customers.

MEXICO CITY, Dec. 13, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Yalo, a pioneer in the Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven conversational commerce, announces a $20 million extension of its Series C, which will serve to deepen its AI capabilities, through a new strategic partnership with Glisco Partners, offering commercial and financial support to drive continued supercharged growth. Yalo enables its customers to seamlessly connect with their consumers and grow revenue through AI-powered conversations on platforms such as WhatsApp.

Since its founding, Yalo has cemented its position as a global frontrunner in the conversational AI revolution and is democratizing generative AI in Latin America and other emerging markets. Its success is evident in its prestigious client portfolio, which includes industry leaders like Coca-Cola, Nestle, Mondelez, Coppel, Banco Azteca, GPA, and many others.

Yalo has identified a huge market opportunity that sits at the intersection of conversational commerce and the 2.8T fragmented retail landscape. Conversational commerce, characterized by transactions taking place within messaging apps, is projected to reach a staggering USD $130 billion in market size in emerging markets by 2025. Latin America has traditionally led the way, in particular, holds immense growth potential in this sector due to the prevalence of WhatsApp as a messaging tool, and a fragmented retail industry that has yet to properly digitalize.

There are more than 5 million small merchants in Latin America, and 50M globally that still operate majorly offline. Yalo powers enterprises such as Coca Cola to not only engage with these merchants but also help them grow through AI assistants that advise them on what to buy and how to grow their business. Yalo is democratizing AI to a sector that traditionally hadn’t had access to internet, other than WhatsApp.

What sets Yalo’s product apart is it that it has natively built a commerce, marketing, and service for the AI era and combines it in a single platform. With AI at its center, Yalo’s solution combines insights on selling preferences, available products, and customers’ historical purchases, to yield a highly personalized purchasing experience and journey.

Yalo offers a creator suite, enabling its customers to securely train and easily deploy their own custom AI models. With Studio+, customers can build their own AI agents for various use cases and deploy them in any channel. These AI models are integrated into customers’ systems, third party tools, and Yalo’s platform for commerce, marketing, and cx.

Yalo leverages AI to create highly personalized marketing interactions with users through multiple channels. With Journeys, clients define their business objectives, and the system takes care of delivering the perfect message or journey to the right person at precisely the right time, maximizing results.

With sales Genie, Yalo offers users an AI-based expert sales agent that facilitates automated selling. Combining historical data, top-performing sales representatives’ behaviors and Yalo’s predictive recommendation algorithms, customers are not only guided on what to buy but also how to make the most out of products.

Glisco Partners is committed to delivering lasting value by offering commercial and financial support to further boost Yalo’s revenue growth. This is achieved by leveraging its well-established strategic network and extensive local knowledge in Latin America.   

Commenting on Yalo’s performance, Javier Mata, founder and CEO, said, “We are deeply grateful for Glisco’s support and will continue to focus on building great products that help our customers grow by leveraging the great potential of AI in a safe and easy manner. Together we will democratize AI to millions of merchants and consumers that traditionally haven’t had access.”

Alfredo Castellanos, Managing Partner of Glisco Partners, commented on the investment: “We are very excited to partner with Yalo on this journey to revolutionize the way businesses engage with their customers through artificial intelligence. Yalo is a highly disruptive company with immense growth potential and a pioneer in AI-driven conversational commerce in LatAm. We believe it is perfectly positioned to continue expanding and making a lasting impact.”  

About Yalo
Yalo empowers customer-centric enterprises to grow through Conversational AI. Its integrated platform merges AI-driven Marketing, Commerce, and Service into one, enabling business to grow and unlock the full potential of customer relationships through messaging apps. Renowned for its commitment to real ROI and its “no shelf-ware” (TM) promise, Yalo is the choice of leading enterprises like Nestle, Coca Cola, Unilever, and others. With its platform serving more than 100M consumers, and 2.5M merchants globally, Yalo is shaping the future of enterprise conversational AI. Discover more at www.yalo.ai.

About Glisco Partners
Glisco is a leading independent Growth Equity firm with over 20 years of history, specializing in Private Equity and Real Estate investments. While primarily focused on Mexico, Glisco also engages in international investment opportunities, particularly in the U.S. With a team having over 85 years of combined experience in principal investment, Glisco has established a long and successful track record executing and exiting high-quality transactions. More information can be found at: www.gliscopartners.com

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Tania Rojas
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