Good day. With $26 million in hand for its first fund, Miami-based venture firm Zenda is making pre-seed and seed investments in U.S. and Latin American startups. The firm is looking for tech startups that modernize agriculture, financial services, healthcare and supply-chain industries.

Zenda is led by Esteban Reyes, who previously invested in logistics startup SmartHop, software startup Cypress and others. We spoke with Reyes about the firm’s strategy and the current market. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

WSJ Pro: Latin America saw a burst of venture investments followed by a sharp slowdown recently. Why are you still making deals there?

Reyes: All of the companies that I started had operations in LatAm and I’ve hired more than 300 people in the region. There are secular trends that are basically immutable, such as growing tech adoption by consumers, the cost of data going down, and the pressure on businesses to get technology on par to what consumers are used to. There was a lot of tourist capital in the region. We believe the local VC ecosystem matured enough where there's sufficient capital to get a startup to the growth stage.

WSJ Pro: How do you use research at your firm?

Reyes: We’ve assembled a team of researchers who work on developing industry theses for the firm. During the research process, we build a network of potential portfolio companies and buyers of the technology. We are trading nonobvious information to get people to want to spend time with us—that means founders, investors and customers—and making connections between them.

WSJ Pro: Why did you choose to focus on investing in tech for legacy industries?

Reyes: I don’t like the term ‘legacy.’ They are underserved industries, where software has not really been adopted. I saw it firsthand with my family transforming the oil-and-gas industry in Colombia, and my first company was a fintech that automated processes at banks. These companies tend to be very people- and capital-intensive as a result of not having automation and software in their workflows.

And now on to the news...

Bankrupt crypto company could get new life. Two Wall Street heavyweights are locked in a bidding war for bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network, The Wall Street Journal reports.

• Apollo Global Management and senior executives at distressed-debt specialist Fortress Investment Group are each backing competing groups that aim to restart Celsius under new management, people familiar with the matter said.
   
• Each proposal would kick in around $50 million to help Celsius resume some operations as a publicly traded company owned mostly by its creditors, according to people familiar with the matter and investor presentations viewed by the Journal.
   
• Investors that buy up and turn around downtrodden companies have largely shunned bankrupt crypto companies.

Shein is set to re-enter India as soon as this month by partnering with one of the country’s largest retail businesses, according to people familiar with the matter, in a bid to tap India’s growing consumer market and diversify its China-centric supply chain, WSJ reports. The Indian government has approved a partnership between the online fashion retailer and the retail unit of conglomerate Reliance Industries, the people said. Reliance is a major player in India’s economy and its unit Reliance Retail operates more than 15,000 stores across India that sell a range of products including groceries and clothes.

Federal Reserve officials indicated the decision about whether to raise interest rates at their meeting next month is shaping up as a close call, with another policy maker Thursday hinting she would support another increase, WSJ Pro reports. Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan, a key centrist on the Fed’s policy-setting committee, suggested that barring further weakness in the economic outlook, she would be prepared to lift the benchmark federal-funds rate by a quarter percentage point at the central bank’s June 13-14 meeting.

Funds

Insight Partners, has raised a fund to help it hold on to stakes in companies held by six older vehicles, WSJ Pro reports. The New York-based firm, which manages $75 billion in assets, rounded up $1.3 billion to buy stakes in the software companies from the vehicles Insight originally used to acquire them, according to a statement seen by The Wall Street Journal. 

People

Employee experience platform Simpplr appointed Miriam Connaughton as chief people and experience officer. She previously ran an HR consulting business, and before that, was a partner in EY's People Advisory business.

Instawork, a marketplace for hourly workers, raised $60 million in its Series D round valuing the company at $760 million. TCV led the round, with participation from new investors 9yards Capital and Larry Fitzgerald Jr., as well as existing backers, including Benchmark, Craft Ventures, and Greylock.

Obie, a six-year-old Chicago-based insurtech startup, announced a $25.5 million Series B funding round led by Battery Ventures, with participation from Brick and Mortar Ventures, DivcoWest and other investor groups.

Union.ai, a Bellevue, Wash.-based artificial-intelligence startup, raised $19.1 million in a Series A round led by NEA and Nava Ventures. The funding will go toward fueling growth and expanding Union’s line of products, which include Flyte, an open-source platform designed to automatically assign identifiers to manage multiple versions of software, among other capabilities, the company said.

Stathera, a Montreal-based micro-electromechanical startup, raised $15 million in a Series A funding round co-led by BDC Capital’s Deep Tech Venture Fund and Celesta Capital.

Swapp, an Israel-based startup that makes automation software for architectural construction documents, announced the closing of an $11.5 million Series A fundraising round led by global investment firm Eurazeo.

Enterprise cloud software startup Groopit announced a $3.5 million seed funding round led by WestRiver Group, with participation by existing investors Cercano Management, Tapas Capital, Cascade Seed Fund and others, the Seattle, Wash.-based company said.

SapientAI, a Mountain View, Calif.-based AI startup, emerged from stealth with $5 million in seed funding from 8VC, Correlation Ventures and GTMfund.

• More consolidation lies ahead for private equity as firms look to amass fee-generating assets.
   
• Renewable-energy companies are leasing warehouses at a faster pace, boosting the otherwise sagging demand for industrial real estate.
   
• Companies outside of the tech sector are facing an uphill climb in recruiting Big Tech’s laid-off software developers, engineers and data scientists.
   
• Changes to how companies account for renewable energy may lift the veil on actual usage vs. credits bought to offset fossil-fuel use.

• Bitcoin miner Bit Digital adds machines in Iceland before possible U.S. tax crackdown
   
• Google is spared a search-engine switch by a major partner
   
• Chinese tech giants’ results reflect lackluster economic recovery
   
• Antiabortion group used cellphone data to target ads to Planned Parenthood visitors
   
• Twitter says Microsoft may have violated API policies
   
• AT&T is spending billions to wire U.S. for fast internet as rivals take different path
   
• Flexport taps Uber Freight executive to build truck brokerage

• Mubadala’s Ajami says money is ‘no longer a moat’ for startups (Bloomberg)
   
• Future space food could be made from astronaut breath (MIT Technology Review)
   
• Have tech jobs lost their luster? (Crunchbase News)

This newsletter was compiled by Matthew Strozier, Angus Loten and Marc Vartabedian.

WSJ Pro Venture Capital is a premium service of The Wall Street Journal. We cover venture capital and the global startup ecosystem. Share your tips, comments and questions: vcnews@wsj.com

The Team: Matthew Strozier, Yuliya Chernova, Brian Gormley, Angus Loten and Marc Vartabedian.

Follow us on Twitter: @wsjvc