Pandas is leveraging overseas relationships and technology to solve logistics and language barrier issues for Latin American businesses wishing to import from Asia.
Headquartered in Bogotá, the Columbian startup is connecting a $190B market directly with Asian manufacturers. For small businesses in Latin America, who are the core engine of the economy there, procurement is a long and painful process with many supply chain inefficiencies.
Pandas provides a solution to these problems by offering Asian-origin inventory to micro-businesses. Their current product range is in the basic electronics category, but they will soon expand to other segments such as textiles, home accessories, among others. They also plan to provide a comprehensive suite of fintech and analytics solutions, offering small and micro-businesses seamless access to better financial tools and financing.
About the founders/CEO:
Rio Xin and Marcos Esterli are the founders of Pandas. They hail from Chinese and Spanish origins.
Rio Xin was previously a management consultant at McKinsey where he focused on startups, strategy, PE, digital transformation and the development of their fuel practice. His background is in Aerospace Engineering, and he holds a Ph.D. from Cambridge University. He is fluent in English, Spanish, Shanghainese and Mandarin.
Marcos Esterli was the Head of B2B at Treinta, a prominent LatAm Fintech, where he developed the ecommerce and B2B vertical. Prior to this, he led product teams at Clarity AI and was also a consultant at McKinsey. He studied Physics at Imperial College London and holds a Master’s in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania.