Mendel

Mendel operates a corporate spend management platform that combines expense management, payments and corporate travel booking for enterprises in Latin America. Companies issue smart physical and virtual Visa corporate cards governed by preset rules on when, how and where employees may spend, alongside budgets, custom approval routes, automatic flagging of out-of-policy expenses, and real-time transaction visibility with the ability to enable or disable cards from the web platform or mobile app.

A layer of AI agents handles document and compliance work: an employee photographs a receipt and the system retrieves and validates the corresponding CFDI invoice against Mexico's SAT tax authority, detects inconsistencies and confirms deductibility. Data is synchronized natively with corporate ERPs including SAP, Oracle and NetSuite, plus banks, to automate reconciliation and speed month-end close. Additional modules cover instant reimbursements regardless of payment method and Mendel Viajes for planning and controlling business travel. The company states the platform holds SOC 2 certification.

Mendel describes its objective as automating manual CFO operations and serving as a single destination for B2B spend; management has characterized the product as a combination of SAP Concur and a corporate card issuer, and as "Ramp for Latin American enterprises," differentiated by a focus on large, complex organizations.

Founding story

Alan Karpovsky and Alejandro Zecler started Mendel in early 2021 and took part in Y Combinator's Winter 2021 batch. Both had previously founded and exited companies: Karpovsky sold creative management SaaS Herolens to Innovid, and Zecler sold document management SaaS Zetech to Visma. Helena Polyblank (CPO) and Gonzalo Castiglione (CTO) later joined as co-founders.

Business model

Mendel sells a software-first platform to enterprise finance teams on recurring SaaS fees rather than relying exclusively on interchange or lending. Pricing is customized to each company's operation, the number of cards required and its approval workflows, with onboarding handled by a commercial team that configures policies and approval hierarchies, integrates the customer's ERP and issues employee cards.

Revenue comes from a mix of recurring SaaS subscription fees for the expense management and travel tools, which account for more than 50% of revenue, interchange fees on credit card transactions, and a take rate on the bill pay product. Gross margins were reported at over 75%.

Traction

As of March 2025 the company reported roughly 500 customers across Mexico and Argentina, 80 employees (up from 64 a year earlier), annual recurring revenue growth of nearly 2.5x year-over-year, gross margins above 75%, and cash-flow positive operations in December 2024, with profitability anticipated by late 2025. Total funding stood at $60 million in equity plus $50 million in credit facilities.

Latest developments

The March 2025 Series B is earmarked for scaling AI-driven spend management capabilities, growing product development, go-to-market and AI research teams, and geographic expansion into Chile, Colombia and Peru in 2025 followed by Brazil in 2026. The company has since marketed Mendel AI, a set of finance-focused AI agents covering receipt validation and travel management.