They got strong in volatile Argentina with high inflation and are now landing in Turkey

Juan Cruz de la Rúa shares a common great-grandfather with former president Fernando de la Rúa. As a young man he lived through the 2001 crisis and from that moment he knew that operating in Argentina is centrally take into account the high volatility.

Many years later, in 2016, together with other Argentine entrepreneurs such as Jaime Macaya, Venezuelans and Mexicans, they founded Kavak, which in a short time became leader in the sale of semi-new cars in the region.

Things of fate, De la Rúa is expanding Kavak in Turkey, volatile, with strong devaluations and high inflation, although not as much as Argentina. The two countries have something in common: used cars They are considered a safe haven asset. Turkey is the third largest car market in the world. And for development in that market allocated 60 million dollars.

expansion

This morning Kavak also announced another one initial investment of $ 120 million to establish operations in Chile, Colombia and Peru.

With these new openings, the startup, which already operates in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, seeks to expand a second-hand buying and selling model guaranteed and facilitating the always cumbersome transfer procedures, who he is dealing with.

Jaime Macaya, 40, political scientist at the University of Tella and with a masters in business in the United States, until now CEO in Argentinait will deal with South America, excluding Brazil.

The regional team 150 people involved in technological innovation will be in Argentina.

Valuable refuge

Macaya says this in times of crisis speed up operations in search of access to a dollarized asset that maintains its value. They notice it these days in their operations. And moving forward he cares about the delays in deliveries of 0 km due to difficulty in the global supply chain and local obstacles, as it limits the second-hand market in the medium term.

The prices are I always agree in pesos but depending on the blue.

With a rating ofWith $ 8.5 billion, Kavak is about to enter a new category, that of decacornsthe upper stage of unicorns which are companies valued at over $ 1,000 million.

The platform has individual investors known as Manu Ginobili. Or the Mexican F1 driver, Checo Pérez. In the past five rounds of funding, Kavak raised $ 1.6 billion of brilliant funds such as Softbank, DST Global, Greenoaks and Argentine Kaszek, by Hernán Kazah, among others. in your directory Of the 12 senior executives, five are Argentine.

“In Latin America, 90% of used car transactions are between private individuals. It is usually a very stressful period, with various risks and the distrust that involves carrying out transactions of high economic value with strangers. That’s why it’s a huge opportunity for us eliminate mechanical and document fraudif it also provides funding, ”Macaya told Clarín. They have an agreement with the Supervielle bank and finance 20% of the operations when the market average is 5%.

In Argentina, they have a stock of 2,500 cars and have been operating since 2020 in six commercial offices, a 17,000-meter reconditioning plant in Tigre and nearly 1,000 employees.

Kavak is already present in 24 cities around the world, has 8,000 employees, 75 logistics centers and an inventory of over 28,000 cars.