Brazilian Tech Giants are hungry
The vast liquidity of the market and public offerings are pushing M&As and exits
To begin this article, I need to make a small disclaimer: we sold the company to Locaweb (LWSA3) last month.
Vindi was founded in 2013 to help subscription businesses in the hard journey of charging customers and managing recurring customers. We developed a platform to bill and manage all types of subscriptions: monthly plans, billing and recurring payments. We are the leaders in this market in Brazil, with more than 6,000 customers and we are very happy to say that companies like Thomson Reuters, Smartfit, Whirlpool and many more, trust us.
Last year, we were approached by many companies interested in acquiring Vindi. All of them focused on complete software solutions. We choose Locaweb (LWSA3) for their cultural alignment, vision of the future and so on and so forth.
This was my second exit and we are very happy.
Brazil, liquidity and tech giants
The moment in Brazil; a huge liquidity with a combination of tech companies going public, results in pushing M&As and corporate investments. Just in the second semester of 2020, Locaweb acquired Melhor Envio, Social Miner, Etus and Ideris. By the way, the strategy of Locaweb is to create a powerful platform to support the e-commerce and software growth in the next decade in Brazil.
The market is confident in Locaweb’s strategy, see the LWSA3 stock performance of the last 12 months below .
And the other players are targeting to replicate similar strategies.
Just in these two months of 2021, a dozen of M&A cases are being built. To mention some cases, see:
Nuvini (a local search fund) acquired the marketing platform LeadLovers and we will see a fast movement of these big techs in Brazil in the next months.
2020 showed us: the appetite for M&As of tech companies are rising. I believe the moment is hotter than last year because liquidity is on higher levels. For example, Brazil registered more IPOs in 2020 than all of Europe, showing us that the hottest “opportunities are ” here. IPOs pushed M&As, historically.
XP, Stone, Magalu, Locaweb, Dasa (acquired Gesto), Mercado Livre, Totvs, Sinqia, Nubank (acquired EasyInvest), Itau, Neogrid, Loggi acquired dozens of startups last year. They are seeking to lead their segment and M&A is the main strategy with “big money” in the market.
On the other side, bankers and consulting companies are surfingwell , supporting both sides (sellers and buyers) in these transactions.
The moment is good for founders (especially for softwares companies), investors and big companies. But it won't last long.