Stores were bottlenecked by low purchasing power, no credit access, and running out of storage space. Hardware stores are the most efficient last-mile delivery channel across LatAm. This is less driven by unreliable logistics (some of it is), but more so by a low-concentration of purchasing power und low bundling of volumes. 20% of the purchasing cost of construction materials in LatAm. 🚛 Logistics cost routinely account for ca. Traditional financiers in LatAm have found it challenging to extend credit to small SMBs in the construction space. Even when storage space is sufficient, small Mom-and-Pop stores have to purchase inventory and finance the purchase out of their own pockets. 💳 The other bottleneck for hardware stores has been the access to working capital financing. Demand is often bigger than storage space. When they run out of storage space, they cannot purchase and sell more until they have made more room. They purchase materials on inventory, store the cement bags and equipment anywhere they can find space – including their roofs ! – and sell it off. ↔️ Space-constraint is a real issue for these small hardware stores. 👪 The majority of those hardware stores are not owned by chains – they are in the hands of Moms and Pops. 50% of the total sales are distributed by 600’000 hardware stores. 🏪 LatAm has a distribution structure hugely reliant on local hardware stores. 💰 LatAm is a $120B+ construction materials market – roughly the same ballpark as India’s construction materials market To fully appreciate Tül’s own playbook, you have to consider the Latin-American market context: But likening Tül to Infra.Market is also selling short Tül’s execution – and its own category-defining playbook. So, on the surface, Tül’s stellar execution is so similar to Infra.Market’s it’s almost scary. All this while constantly increasing its already healthy margins.

In that past year, we’ve been quite impressed with 20-30%+ month-on-month growth on quite a large scale already ( Tül plans to be at $450M annualized GMV at the end of 2022, the same run-rate Infra.Market was early in 2021). Our partnership with Souvik and Aaditya had spoiled us to expect quite a lot of the next category-leading marketplace, since they had built Infra.Market to grow to $400M annualized GMV just a year ago.Įarlier in 2021, at about the same time Infra.Market was at its $400M run rate, we were fortunate that Enrique and the Tül team decided to partner with us. We have had quite some success in our first fund with our early investment in Infra.Market ( more on that here). Let’s start at the start 😊 Tül started as the mega-distributor for distributed construction hardware stores What is it that makes both companies so successful? So with our inside view as investor in both firms, we want to answer: Besides Tül, the other category-leader we backed early is Infra.Market. We’re fortunate to be early investors not only in one, but in both of the category-defining ConTech marketplaces globally. But more importantly: It puts Tül among the fastest-growing ConstructionTech marketplaces globally. This places Tül among the fastest growing tech firms across the LatAm.It went to market in Colombia in May 2020, after Enrique, Juan Carlos and Nicolas had founded Tül in February 2020. Tül is in the market for just 20 months.This makes Tül the highest valued- ConstructionTech in LatAm. Tül is based in Colombia and category-leading across Latin America. Tül is not in the US, Europe or India.We’ve all become so used to mega-rounds in the past year. Today news broke that our portfolio company Tül had completed its most recent growth round: $181M on an $800M post, with an exclusive club of investors in 8VC, Avenir, Coatue, Tiger Global, Lightrock and others.

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