Venezuelan startup quickly builds Latin American empire

Although the Venezuelan economy is in shambles and more than 6 million Venezuelans have opted to flee Maduro’s dystopia, one young entrepreneur has managed to start a booming, international business.

Vicente Zavarce founded Yummy Rocket in Caracas in April 2020 and has not looked back since.

Yummy -- a delivery app that allows customers to order among 1,500 products from so-called “dark stores” --  has grown into Venezuela’s largest tech startup and has quickly expanded to other Latin American countries.

According to Bloomberg, Zavarce’s company will expand operations to Ecuador and Panama this year. The startup has been able to grow in a highly competitive market – dominated by well-funded services such as Colombia’s Rappi and Brazil’s iFood – by promising customers that their products will be delivered in an average of less than 14 minutes, thanks in part to the “dark stores,” or company store houses strategically located across cities in which Yummy operates.

“We believe Yummy Rocket can be the largest supermarket in Latam, one that you never have to step foot in,” Zavarce said, adding that the expansion to Ecuador and Panama is based on the fact that both countries have high population density cities and stable, dollarized economies.

Yummy is currently the market leader in Venezuela and Bolivia and is competitive in Chile and Peru. To fuel growth, Zavarce stated the company will build about 80 new dark stores this year.

When it was founded in 2020, the company received $18 million in seed capital – which at the time was the largest investment round to date for a Venezuelan startup.

Last year, Latin American startups attracted a record $15.3 billion in venture funding, according to preliminary data released Sunday by the Association for Private Capital Investments in Latin America, or LAVCA.