About
Put simply, Melon is developing tech and fulfillment infrastructure — or the backend — to enable small and medium e-commerce merchants to “easily” sell and grow across multiple channels such as Shopify, Instagram and Amazon, and then deliver almost anywhere in the region.The company has launched five distribution centers in three cities across Colombia and one more in Mexico City, with about 190 employees — including about 90 full-time employees and 100 contractors. The startup also gives sellers the ability to manage and monitor the process from its platform from wherever they are as well as access data analytics tools in an effort “to make better operational and sales and marketing decisions.” In his view, Melonn has a “fresh approach to disrupt e-commerce behind the scenes — everything from SaaS and financing to fulfillment enablement” with a tech platform and growing fulfillment network that “is superior to anything else on the market.”The startup plans to use its new capital to grow its tech, product and sales teams as part of its effort to continue to strengthen the platform and develop adjacent products including embedded fintech. The company is also planning to scale up commercial capabilities and increase its network of urban fulfillment centers to be able to offer efficient same/next day fulfillment across more cities in the region. Interestingly, according to NFX General Partner Pete Flint, Melonn got its Series A pre-empted by QED “after getting competing offers from other top funds.”NFX and existing backers Pear and Mexico-based Wollef (formely known as Jaguar Ventures) doubled down on their investment, which values Melonn “in the neighborhood” of $100 million post-money and brings the Bogota-based startup’s total raised since its November 2020 inception. Melonn says its proprietary tech platform guides sellers through “a simple and highly automated” onboarding process, then “seamlessly” connects their different e-commerce channels.
