Venezuela companies

Cashea ad on the Nasdaq tower. Photo: Romina Hendlin, Cashea

Cashea just announced it raised another $60m for its Series B round, led by FinSight Ventures, bringing its total capital raised (all equity) to $100m in 2026 alone. Another amazing fit for the already impressive Venezuelan BNPL king. In the same week, we knew that Colombia’s Grupo Nutresa acquired ice cream manufacturer Tío Rico.

The big question after these two announcements is whether Venezuela has finally become investable. Does the potential return of the capacity to do business, to invest in the country, outweigh its risks? In the long and medium term, it does, but in the short run it still needs a lot of work. 

Venezuela remains very dependent on oil. This sector is held closely by the State, and I speculate that, after the US took over the reins of the fuel commercial activity, a bigger size of the GDP is concentrated in oil and gas than in previous years. According to Financial Times, this year the US has collected about $13bn since January in oil revenue, while in 2025 and 2024 PDVSA reported collecting $14.7bn and $17.5bn, respectively. So we could expect at least $20bn in oil revenue by the end of the year (+30%, not bad). Until that income is divested in the economy in a hopefully efficient manner and trickles down to the sectors that directly impact the end consumer, the rest of the country’s value chains remain constrained.

So, considering we cannot count on oil yet, the rest of the economy will need to do some legwork that involves both the efforts of the public sector and the private sector to attract international investors. The headlines about Chasea and Tío Rico might suggest that this is working. However, conditions haven’t changed much since before the economic devastation.

The exchange rate gap appears to have narrowed, but recent monthly inflation figures seem to have reversed the gains in that front from previous months (6.3% in May, 13.8% in June, according to the Central Bank BCV). The biggest indicator right now to measure business sentiment, according to Guillermo Arcay (and I agree with him), is the BVC index, which has fallen from its all-time high of 7,331.21 points in March to around 5,170–5,210 points, a 29% decline that indicates the euphoria and frenzied sentiment have subsided.

First, let’s dissect the “whys” of the two major deals that have put Venezuela on a better side of the headlines after the terrible devastation of June 24th. Because in spite of the earthquakes, there were still a lot of issues that international investors need to be clearer about before they swarm the market and become part of the eventual recovery.

$100M por el buche

Investment rounds are usually carefully considered and longer to close than they appear.

Cashea was already on a path to raise an enormous amount of capital; even in a similar economic scenario without the political change and the earthquakes, they would still have raised a huge amount in 2026. However, how much upside could this new macroeconomic scenario have contributed to the rounds reaching $100 million? 

The interest of these venture capital firms (Finsight Ventures, Spice Expeditions, and others) that were already investing in emerging markets stemmed more from the company itself than from the country’s promise of returning to greatness. It’s a bet on the jockey, not the horse. The reason for continuing to invest in the only relevant player in Venezuela’s BNPL sector, which Cashea basically revived by itself, is its operational efficiency, innovation genes, and discipline. They are not simply a first-mover: they did build a business to last. They make it seem easy, though it was certainly not.

The other major news came from Grupo Nutresa’s acquisition of Tio Rico, a brand loved by Venezuelans (remember Bati Bati?) and the main competitor of Helados Efe, owned by Empresas Polar. 

Sold by Mack (an automobile company) for $30m according to familiar sources reported by Bloomberg, this announcement looks more like a typical baron play of buying equity in a once promising business at the price of “vacas flacas”.

Two months ago, Grupo Nutresa also bought another ice-cream-making company in Colombia called Mimo, for about $12-15m, which doesn’t sound so bad, except this company represents only 5.8% of market share in that country, while Tío Rico could easily possess 50% of the market share in Venezuela. Just double the price for 10 times the share. So in this case it was an equity play by the Gillinsky family, which controls Nutresa. They are fulfilling their prophecy of “dumping” the market with Colombian products, acquiring cheap equity stakes in major companies and not investing a single dime in CAPEX, waiting to see how things play out.

I’ve even seen the appetite for opportunities in both tech and more traditional sectors by helping international investors be exposed to those deals. The appetite is there, but the conditions aren’t right just yet; investors still need to trust the public sector before any major CAPEX investment is played out, and private companies need to demonstrate professionalism, show a strategic mindset to achieve operational efficiency, and prove their commitment to growth, which is so needed to calm the nerves of investing in Venezuela.

Low prices, equity plays in real estate, and quick wins are not enough to Make Venezuela Prosperous Again. The private sector needs to be open to innovation, be more transparent, and appeal to a language that might be unknown to them but common to foreign capital.