Dear reader,
When Latin America is mentioned in the realm of startups, the countries that come to mind are the likes of Brazil, Mexico and Argentina. Rarely a mention ever of Central America.
To the ignorant eye, Central America is a collection of markets deemed “too small” to be concerned with.
The startup covered today (boxful) is re-writing that antiquated narrative, by providing Central American SMEs with the tools they need to grow.
Biography
Salvador Ramirez is the co-founder & CEO of boxful.
Headquartered in El Salvador, boxful provides a suite of solutions for SME e-commerce merchants across El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. These solutions include software, logistics, and financing.
Founded in 2023, boxful has delivered 3.5 million parcels, scaling to over $15M in ARR while raising $3.4m USD in capital*.
Salvador has previously founded and exited two startups, Get My Food! (food delivery) and Hylio (agritech drones).
What was boxful’s genesis?
During the Covid-19 pandemic, I had to spend 30 days quarantining in a hotel room after returning from a trip to Nicaragua.
To pass time, I started selling electronics on Facebook Marketplace. I discovered that people wanted to chat with me throughout the buying process, and that they wanted to pay in cash as a precautionary measure since they didn’t know me.
The food delivery startup I ran at the time had a fleet of bikes that I used to send same day deliveries across El Salvador. I ended up selling half a million dollars worth of GMV in six months.
That side hustle would become the inception for boxful.
What problem is boxful solving?
E-commerce is highly fragmented in all emerging markets. Nearly every part of the value chain operates in isolation and is adapted to offline commerce.
SMEs selling via e-commerce feel the pain most acutely, as they lack the scale to build out their own capabilities (warehousing, delivery, etc).
boxful provides those capabilities for Central American e-commerce SMEs. We help these SMEs operate with the same tools (logistics, software, fintech, infrastructure) that the biggest e-commerce retailers enjoy.
Your initial thesis differed from what boxful is today. Can you elaborate?
It takes 5 hours to drive from east to west in El Salvador. But it takes up to 7 days to receive a laptop ordered online from a local retailer. This is because retailers’ fulfillment centres (ie: warehouses) are not built for e-commerce. Rather, they are designed for replenishing their physical stores.
Our original thesis was to create fulfillment centers geared towards e-commerce, serving large local retailers. We wanted to enable 24-hour delivery across El Salvador.
We ended up in 6-12 month sales cycles, where these large retailers would look to squeeze every last penny. When we got access to their historical data, we realized e-commerce was a tiny share of their sales (even after the pandemic-induced e-commerce boom). We weren’t solving a big enough problem for them.
Why and how did you pivot to SMEs?