🛍 E-Commerce

Welcome to Latinometrics. We bring you Latin American insights and trends through concise, thought-provoking data visualizations.

E-Commerce Companies 🛒

With all of the companies we hype up on a weekly basis, what would you wager is the most valuable firm in Latin America today?

Pemex? Nubank? Rappi?

Try Mercado Libre (MELI), the e-commerce giant out of Argentina, which today has a market cap of over $100B. MELI’s share price has gone up by over 25% this year and some 1600% over the last decade.

Since its launch in the late 1990s, MELI has taken over much of the e-commerce world of Latin America. In fact, judging by Google Trends, it’s the dominant e-commerce company across regional economies such as Argentina and Venezuela. In the former of these, the home country of founder Marcos Galperin, it’s near-hegemonic and well ahead of its competition.

Which isn’t to say MELI’s not up against some formidable players in this sector. Global e-commerce heavyweight Amazon has expanded beyond the US and European Union (followed by Walmart) to become the top-tracked retail company across Colombia, Guatemala, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru. In each of these countries, notable for their deep and intricate economic and political relationships with the US, Amazon has permeated Latin American conversations about the best online marketplaces to buy goods or products.

And then there are some strange unique situations. For example, Chile is home to South America’s largest department store chain, Falabella, which has managed to stay even ahead of neighboring MELI.

Meanwhile, Brazil’s most popular e-commerce site currently is Singapore’s Shopee, which makes up one of the Asian players in the Latin American market alongside Chinese budget phenomena Shein and Temu.

Interestingly, no European players are relevant in the region this space, a clear contrast from the telecoms or banking sectors where firms like Santander, BBVA, or Telefónica still dominate after all these years.

Hopefully, more local firms in the region will follow in the footsteps of Falabella and Mercado Libre and in the future we can see a plethora of homegrown heroes from which Latin American consumers will be able to choose.

Comment of the Week 🗣️

This week, Marcelo raises an interesting consideration on why Mexico has surpassed Brazil in the fintech industry as of last year.

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