Morado, a two-month-old Colombian startup aiming to digitize beauty salons in Latin America, has raised $5 million in a pre-seed round from a bevy of global investors.
“We are the everything store for beauty shops,” Acosta, who also serves as the company’s CEO, told TechCrunch. “At Morado, beauty shops can find everything they need to operate, from hair products to uniforms and cleaning products.”
The demand is there, in her view.
“There are more than 700,000 beauty salons in Latin America, and the industry supply chain hasn’t changed for over 40 years,” she said. “Eight-five percent of beauty salons have still not adopted any kind of digital tool. The industry lacks technology in every aspect.”
In its first 30 days of operation, Morado says it “already has national coverage for deliveries in Colombia.” It also has more than 60 employees, 72% of which it says are women.
The startup plans to use its new capital to accelerate growth in its home country of Colombia and to position the brand in Mexico, where it intends to move during 2022.
Daniel Lloreda, co-founder and general partner at H20 Capital Innovation, said his firm believes in taking a verticalized approach to digitizing offline to online industries “with a clear financial operating system roadmap.”
“We met Angie months before Morado was founded and were driven by her curiosity and desire to tackle an unsexy market ripe for disruption,” he told TechCrunch.
