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"Latin America's startup scene had a busy month of September, with a flurry of deal announcements and corporate launches. Here's a recap of the news you don't want to miss.\nWelcoming new players\neBay launched its app eBay Fashion\u00A0in Brazil, making it the\u00A0first eBay-branded product in the country. The company also confirmed that its platform would soon be translated into Brazilian Portuguese, which hints at an upcoming Latin American push.\n\nIt will be interesting to see what it means for MercadoLibre, the region's\u00A0leading online marketplace, of which eBay\u00A0owns a stake. Brazilian magazine Exame recently asked country manager Luis Arjona\u00A0whether the group was planning to take over MercadoLibre or another player, and he made the following answer (translation ours): &amp;quot;eBay has already made many acquisitions. It is an option we always consider.&amp;quot;\n\nIn other news,\u00A0The Huffington Post announced that Brazil\u2019s giant media conglomerate Abril Group will be its partner to launch a Brazilian version of its online media outlet. Current international editions already include the UK, Canada, France, Spain, Italy, Maghreb, and Japan.\n\nBuzzfeed is also gearing up for the launch of its version in Brazilian Portuguese, and editor-in-chief Ben Smith used Twitter to announce his first hire for &amp;quot;Buzzfeed Brasil&amp;quot;, New York-based social media strategist Conz Preti.\nSo excited that @conz will be working on BuzzFeed Brasil, and we're still hiring for a Spanish-speaker ... http://t.co/Oy05V95sLz\n\n\u2014 Ben Smith (@BuzzFeedBen) September 12, 2013\nSpotify launched its service in Argentina as part of a rollout that also included Taiwan, Greece and Turkey. The music service seems keen to grow in Latin America; it had first launched in Mexico last April, and its expansion into Brazil is rumored to be imminent.\n\nPrivate car service Uber launched its app in Bogot\u00E1, the second Latin America after Mexico City in which it expanded its presence. Its first local passenger was Mejorando.la's co-founder Freddy Vega.\n\n\nMergers and acquisitions\nTicketing platform\u00A0Eventbrite\u00A0bought\u00A0its\u00A0Argentine counterpart\u00A0Eventioz, alongside UK-based\u00A0Lanyrd. In 2011, we listed Eventioz as one of the top Latin American startups to watch out for. Following the deal, Eventioz's team is becoming a part of Eventbrite, where its know-how is set to boost to the company's growth in Latin America.\n\n\n\nVenue recommendation platform Yumbling was acquired by Grupo\u00A0Expansi\u00F3n (GEx), one of Mexico's largest media groups. The platform was shut down following the deal, but Yumbling's team wrote a letter to users promising that their content (including reviews, pictures and connections) will be available in the upcoming version, to be relaunched under GEx's umbrella.\n\nArgentine online food delivery platform Sinimanes is merging with its Mexican counterpart\u00A0SeMeAntoja\u00A0to further boost their growth across Latin America. The two companies have jointly raised a new round of funding from NXTP Labs\u00A0and\u00A0500 Startups, whose acceleration programs they had respectively completed.\nThey got funded\nChilean service comparison startup\u00A0ComparaOnline\u00A0raised $11 million in a Series B round of funding led by Ribbit Capital,\u00A0with participation from Endeavor Catalyst, Rise Capital and its Series A backer Kaszek Ventures. This brings the company's total funding to $16 million, which it is using to position itself as the\u00A0leading insurance and financial services marketplace website in Latin America.\n\nBrazil-based online fashion retailer\u00A0Dafiti\u00A0unveiled a\u00A0$70 million investment\u00A0from Canada's Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (OTPP). Dafiti is part of Rocket Internet's international portfolio, and has already raised several rounds of funding, including $45 million from J.P. Morgan in August 2012. According to TechCrunch, this fresh capital influx &amp;quot;will be used primarily to build out what Dafiti has already established, not expand further internationally.&amp;quot;\n\nFellow Rocket-backed Hellofood\u00A0bought online food ordering service Peixe Urbano Delivery. As PulsoSocial pointed out, this was\u00A0Hellofood\u2019s third Brazilian acquisition in just four weeks, following its takeover of\u00A0J\u00E1namesa and MegaMenu. While this confirms that the food delivery space is heating up, it also makes us wonder if Peixe Urbano is still planning to bet on diversification.\n\n\nGoodbye growth capital, hello seed capital?\nSequoia Capital pulled back from Latin America, DealBook reported last month. While the fund's quiet entry into the region had made headlines last year,\u00A0it was reportedly frustrated by the scarcity of deal flow for growth-stage investment.\n\nOn the other hand, the number of available early-stage funding opportunities for Latin American entrepreneurs seems to keep on growing. Earlier this month, Manos Accelerator revealed the names of the first batch of startups it will accelerate. As you may know, this new program is based in Silicon Valley and targets Latino entrepreneurs. Five out of the seven companies in its first class also happen to have at least one female founder.\u00A0The initiative is supported by Google for Entrepreneurs, and its Demo Day will take place at Google's Mountain View\u00A0headquarters in late November.\n\nIn Brazil, the state of Minas Gerais announced that it would inject R$15 million (US$6.2 million) in an ambitious startup acceleration program called\u00A0SEED,\u00A0which stands for\u00A0Startups and Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Development. The initiative has a lot in common with Start-Up Chile; it will offer between $35,000 and $40,000 equity-free seed capital to each project that will take part in its program. Its call for applications runs until October 17, and is open to Brazilian and non-Brazilian startups alike. This should help reinforce Belo Horizonte's positioning as one of Latin America's leading tech hubs under the nickname of &amp;quot;San Pedro Valley.&amp;quot;\n\nTelef\u00F3nica's accelerator Wayra announced that its\u00A0upcoming Global Demo Day\u00A0will simultaneously take place in London, S\u00E3o Paulo and San Francisco on November 14. Its current\u00A0global call for applications\u00A0will remain open until October 20, with vacancies in several of its Academies in Latin America.\n\nWayra also expanded its agreement with MercadoLibre, with whom it had already teamed up in Argentina.\u00A0Their partnership will now reach\u00A0Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, with MercadoLibre providing dedicated funding and support to Wayra-backed startups serving its platforms and APIs.\nBrazilian law on the radar\nAfter three years away from social media, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff recently made her comeback on Twitter and announced the upcoming launch of her official Instagram and Facebook profiles.\n\nA couple of her latest tweets referred to the widening rift between Brazil and the US regarding privacy following Edward Snowden's revelations on foreign surveillance. These included allegations that the National Security Agency (NSA) spied on communications between the Brazilian President and her staff.\n\nThis led Rousseff to cancel (&amp;quot;postpone&amp;quot;) her scheduled official US visit\u00A0and issue the following statement:\u00A0&amp;quot;Illegal surveillance practices intercepting the communication and data of citizens, companies and members of the Brazilian government constitute a serious affront to national sovereignty and individual rights, and are incompatible with democratic cooperation between friendly nations.&amp;quot;\n\nIn addition, the Brazilian government is floating threats to force\u00A0global Internet companies to set up data centers in Brazil. It is still unclear whether it is feasible to get them to comply, and more importantly whether it would be enough to prevent communications from being snooped on.\n\nAnother story worth following is the iPhone trademark battle between Brazilian firm\u00A0Gradiente and\u00A0Apple. Not only did Gradiente claim ownership\u00A0of the brand name, which it had registered years ago, but it started selling an Android smartphone series named &amp;quot;IPHONE.&amp;quot;\u00A0After an IP ruling stating that Apple didn't have exclusive rights to the trademark, the court is now attempting to find a middle-ground between the two parties, ZDNet reports:\n\n&amp;quot;As a compromise, Justice Eduardo Andr\u00E9 Brand\u00E3o de Brito Fernandes determined that\u00A0Gradiente will be able to continue to use the iPhone trademark in its Android-based products, so long as it is accompanied by the Gradiente word - so mobile phones would be named Gradiente iPhone. Conversely, Apple will be able to continue to use the trademark iPhone for its devices in Brazil.&amp;quot;\n\nHowever, the saga is anything but over, as Gradiente's parent company confirmed it would appeal the decision. We will keep you posted on further developments.\nGood reads from across the Web:\n\n\tGrowth Capitalism: New York City vs. San Francisco \u2013 Where to go if you are a Latin American Entrepreneur\u00A0[LAVCA]&amp;amp;lt;/span\n\tHasta la vista Nuflick [StartupBuzz - in Spanish]\n\tLatin American startups and Chilecon Valley: The beginning of a boom\u00A0[VentureBeat]\n\tLos latinos m\u00E1s influyentes: la escuela cl\u00E1sica\u00A0[CNET en Espa\u00F1ol - in Spanish]\n\tLos latinos m\u00E1s influyentes: la nueva generaci\u00F3n\u00A0[CNET en Espa\u00F1ol - in Spanish]\n\tNik Berman: &amp;quot;If things go well, capital will come on its own&amp;quot;\u00A0[PulsoSocial]\n\tNurturing a tech hub: South Florida making progress\u00A0[The Starting Gate]\n\tThinking about expanding your startup in Latin America? Read this first.\u00A0[Medium]\n\nImage source: The Next Web"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/la/2013/10/07/latin-america-tech-news-roundup-september/>