Why we partnered with Kovi

ONEVC invested in Kovi's US$30M Series A alongside Global Founders Capital, Quona Capital, Monashees, YCombinator, Kevin Efrusy (Accel), Maya Capital and BroadHaven. As a General Partner at ONEVC, I am sharing more about why we are excited about this opportunity, market, and team.

At ONEVC, we look to partner with category-defining companies in large markets, led by inevitable founders. Kovi is exactly that.

More about KOVI: Kovi rents cars to ride-hailing drivers in Latin America, starting with Brazil and Mexico. The company's goal is to be an essential-services provider for on-demand workers in emerging markets. Kovi’s asset-light business model consists of renting cars from manufacturers and leasing companies and subleasing them to drivers. In Latin America, on-demand workers (e.g. ride-hailing & food delivery drivers) make 3x+ the minimum wage but face the initial challenge of extremely high car ownership costs (less than 20% car penetration). Founded by former Didi Chuxing’s leaders in Brazil Adhemar Milani Neto (ex-GM) and Joao Costa (ex-CPO) Kovi’s masterplan is to offer insurance, loans, and other vital services while developing best-in-class risk, payments and fleet management solutions for on-demand workers and companies in LatAm.

More about ONEVC: ONEVC is a Silicon Valley and Brazil-based early-stage Venture Capital firm. Its portfolio includes Rappi, Pipefy, HeyDoctor, Idwall, EmCasa, Docket, Loggi and others.

Why we partnered with Kovi?

1 — The economic opportunity for urban mobility and ride-sharing in Latam is massive

As a provider of rental cars for on-demand drivers in Latin America they allow people to get around as efficiently and cheaply as possible while creating economic opportunities for the entire ecosystem, since being a ride-sharing driver in Latam is a decent full-time job.

There are over 1.5M ride-sharing drives in Latam, and economically, you earn more than 75% of the population if you drive for one of the platforms, somewhere between 5–6 minimum wages. The fact that less than 1/4 of the population owns a car (since they are more expensive in Latam) is also another key indicator.

The community of drivers, face high ownership costs to get a car and often does not have access to credit and essential services like health insurance. The lack of access of essential services at large, creates an enormous opportunity, since you have a significant pool of people that want to be economically active, but do not have the tools (the car) to start at the job.

Latam and emerging markets at large are some of the most exciting places for a company like KOVI to thrive. São Paulo, Mexico City, and Rio de Janeiro are the top 3 cities for Uber in terms of numbers of rides. There are 45 cities in the region with more than 1M people, and at ONEVC, we like large TAMs, led by extraordinary founders, such as Adhemar and João Costa. They have numerous stories of resilience, both personally and professionally.

2 — Unit economics that works, with gross margins that improve at scale

In a post-WeWork world, we also like the fact that Kovi — unlike all its competitors — operates out of an asset-light business model that scales. We lease the cars and don’t have to sell them back to the market, allowing the company to focus on fleet management risk and prime customer experience for the drivers. Kovi is profitable on every single car, continually improving gross margins given the scale of the business.

The team has a solid background in the market having worked at Didi/99, Cabify and leasing /OEM partners, and Adhemar is an awe-inspiring leader, having operated across many “hard things about hard things” cycles of scalability. Since we partnered with the Kovi team, the company has grown more than 100x the size of its fleet, and it is nice to visualize Kovi cars in the cities we are in. Kovi's geographic expansion de-risks the business. It is easier to expand to different regions while leveraging the same modular tech stack

3 — Platform play for the ride-sharing industry

We believe KOVI's model has inherent defensibility at scale, given all the features and services we are starting to roll-out to our drivers. Since you offer the car to the driver, you end up becoming the database of record for that market, putting the company a unique position to own everything above the stack. Offering our drivers better data so they understand how to be more profitable, insurance, financial services and a more humane approach to the profession will make Kovi a leading company for fleet-management solutions in emerging markets.

Early days, but very promising.

Congrats to the entire Kovi team!

If you are looking for an opportunity to join a category-defining company in Latam and work from São Paulo, CDMX or Porto Alegre, please check out Kovi's job's page or get in touch with ONEVC, via ft@onevc.vc

More about Kovi:

• Kovi: https://www.kovi.com.br/
• Year of Foundation: 2018
• Current Round: Series A
• Co-investors in this round: Global Founders Capital (lead), ONEVC, Quona Capital, Monashees, Maya Capital, BroadHaven, Kevin Efrusy, Ycombinator.
• Previous Investors: Justin Mateen (co-founder of Tinder), SOMA Capital, Liquid2Ventures and all previously listed investors, with the exception of Quona Capital.

Pedro Sorrentino — General Partner at ONEVC

Pedro Sorrentino is a Co-founder and Partner at ONEVC and leads the firm’s efforts in Silicon Valley.

Pedro started his career in venture capital as an associate at FundersClub. In 18 months, Pedro sourced eleven deals with partnership support, co-investing with Uncork Capital, RedPoint, Andreessen Horowitz, Trinity Ventures, 500 Startups, YCombinator, and others. Since his initial investments, Sequoia, FoundersFund, OpenView Ventures, Kaszek Ventures, DST, and YC-Continuity invested in startups he sourced.

Before becoming an investor, Pedro was employee #11 at SendGrid (NYSE: SEND, then acquired by NYSE: TWLO for US$3B), where he led partnerships, worked as a product manager, expanded the company to Latin America and, ultimately, led the Silicon Valley branch for their startup program, SendGrid Accelerate.

Previously Pedro started two companies. Recomind.net (acquired by Buscape Company) and Slumdog Productions, a profitable events company that connected startups and investors. He enjoys meditation, Formula 1 racing and is a book-worm. He blogs frequently and runs a personal newsletter called Stoic Capital.