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Technology -- The Mexican wave
科技——墨西哥浪潮
At long last, Mexico is enjoying a startup bonanza.
墨西哥初創企業終于迎來了財運。
Kavak, a Mexican startup, provides an elegant solution to a glaring problem: how to buy a used vehicle in a market that is both one of the world’s biggest and its most informal second-hand car markets.
墨西哥初創企業Kavak為一個明顯的痛點提供了一個精妙的解決方案：如何在一個全球最大、也最不正規的二手車市場購買二手車。
Few buyers trust a seller’s assessment of the good’s quality.
很少有買家相信賣方對商品質量的評估。
Few sellers trust the buyer to cough up the money.
很少有賣家相信買方會掏錢。
Transactions often involve “meeting someone at a corner store and seeing how it goes”, says Alejandro Guerra, Kavak’s general manager in Mexico.
Kavak在墨西哥的總經理亞歷杭德羅·圭拉說，交易通常涉及“在街角的商店里與某人見面，看看進展如何”。
On Kavak’s app people can buy and sell cars with the company acting as a trusted middleman.
在Kavak的應用程序上，人們可以在公司作為值得信賴的中間人的情況下買賣汽車。
Kavak, which last month raised $700m in a funding round that valued it at $8.7bn, is part of a startup explosion in Mexico.
Kavak是墨西哥初創企業爆發式增長的一部分。該公司在上個月的一輪融資中籌得7億美元，對其估值為87億美元。
Since the firm became the first Mexican startup to be valued at more than $1bn last year it has been joined by three more such “unicorns”.
自去年該公司成為首家估值超過10億美元的墨西哥初創公司以來，又有三家這樣的“獨角獸公司”加入了該行列。
So far this year unlisted Mexican tech firms have raised nearly $3bn, roughly as much as in the previous nine years combined.
今年迄今為止，未上市的墨西哥科技公司已獲融資近30億美元，大致相當于此前9年的總和。
Mexico’s 126m people are on average young and almost in the upper-middle-income bracket.
墨西哥的1.26億人口平均來講比較年輕，幾乎屬于中上收入階層。
Some 54% own a smartphone, according to Newzoo, a research firm, a slightly higher share than among similarly novelty-loving Brazilians.
根據研究公司Newzoo的數據，約54%的人擁有智能手機，這一比例略高于同樣熱愛新奇事物的巴西人。
Mexico is among the five biggest markets for tech stars like Uber in ride-hailing or Spotify in music-streaming.
墨西哥是打車軟件優步和音樂流媒體Spotify等科技明星企業的五大市場之一。
It is a huge one for Rappi, a Colombian food-delivery darling.
對于哥倫比亞的外賣寵兒Rappi來說，墨西哥是一個巨大的市場。
Until recently, though, domestic founders struggled to make a name for themselves.
不過，直到最近，國內創始人們仍在努力讓自己成名享譽。
That is in large part because of a dearth of money.
這在很大程度上是因為資金匱乏。
Mexican entrepreneurs had to go cap in hand to local venture capitalists with comparatively shallow pockets.
墨西哥企業家不得不向財力相對較弱的當地風險資本家卑躬屈膝。
This began to change in 2019, when SoftBank launched a LatinAmerica fund.
這種情況在2019年開始改變，當時軟銀推出了一只拉美基金。
In September the free-spending Japanese technology-investment group announced a second fund of $3bn, bringing its total investments in the region to $8bn, a lot of it in Mexico.
今年9月，這家揮金如土的日本科技投資集團宣布了第二只30億美元的基金，使其在該地區的總投資達到80億美元，其中大量投資在墨西哥。
Others have been piling in, including Sea, a Singaporean tech conglomerate, Founders Fund, a prominent Silicon Valley venture-capital (VC) firm, and Tiger Global, an aggressive New York hedge fund that has recently been shaking up the VC world.
其他公司紛紛涌入，包括新加坡科技集團Sea，硅谷著名風險投資公司Founders Fund，以及最近撼動風投界的激進紐約對沖基金Tiger Global。
This money has been pouring into home-grown businesses that, like Kavak, solve what Philipp Haugwitz of McKinsey, a consultancy, calls “pain points” in Mexico -- of which there are plenty, from horrible traffic to a lumbering financial sector.
這些資金源源不斷地涌入像Kavak這樣的本土企業，解決了麥肯錫咨詢公司的菲利普·豪維茨所說的墨西哥的“痛點”——痛點繁多，從糟糕的交通狀況到步履蹣跚的金融業。
With just one in three Mexicans owning a bank account, loans hard to get and too many businesses cash-only, fintech startups in particular are thriving, in part thanks to a fintech law from 2018.
墨西哥只有三分之一的人擁有銀行賬戶，貸款很難獲得，而且很多企業只使用現金，這些現狀使得金融科技行業的初創企業發展尤其蓬勃，這在一定程度上要歸功于2018年出臺的一項金融科技法律。
According to Fintech Radar, an industry newsletter, Mexico now boasts more fintechs than Brazil, the historic hub of Latin American enterprise.
據行業通訊《金融科技雷達》報道，墨西哥現在擁有比巴西更多的金融技術，巴西在歷史上曾是拉美企業中心。
Albo, a digital-only “neobank”, makes it easy to set up an account.
Albo是一家僅提供數字化服務的“新銀行”，它使開戶變得很容易。
Clip offers credit-card readers for smartphones.
Clip為智能手機提供信用卡讀卡器。
GBM makes loans to smaller businesses without credit histories.
GBM向沒有信用記錄的小企業提供貸款。
Kavak helps to finance transactions on its platform.
Kavak幫助為其平臺上的交易融資。
Obstacles remain.
障礙仍然存在。
Like many startups, Mexican ones face a hazy path to profitability.
和許多創業公司一樣，墨西哥的創業公司也面臨著一條不明朗的盈利之路。
Dealing with bureaucracy is a nightmare; it can take Kavak days to process a transaction in Mexico, compared with under 40 minutes in Brazil.
與官僚機構打交道是一場噩夢；Kavak在墨西哥處理一筆交易可能需要幾天時間，而在巴西則需要不到40分鐘。
Yet investors are upbeat.
然而，投資者仍持樂觀態度。
Marcelo Claure, who heads SoftBank’s Latin American fund, calls Mexico “the land of opportunity”.
軟銀拉美基金負責人馬塞洛·克勞爾稱墨西哥是“機遇之地”。
It has helped his fund’s returns exceed those in every other region, he says.
他說，這幫助他的基金獲得了超過其他所有地區的回報。
And what works in Mexico may work in other emerging markets.
并且，在墨西哥行得通的方法可能在其他新興市場也行得通。
Kavak, which expanded to Argentina last year and Brazil this year, is now eyeing those across the Pacific and the Atlantic.
Kavak去年擴張到了阿根廷，今年又擴張到了巴西，現在它正著眼于太平洋和大西洋對岸的國家。
譯文由可可原創，僅供學習交流使用，未經許可請勿轉載。
