Involves, the SaaS for trade marketing, raises funds and acquires Chilean startup

Involves — a company that develops software for trade marketing — has just raised R$ 70 million in a funding round, which will primarily be used for the acquisition of a Chilean competitor.

The funding was raised by Bridge One, which had previously invested in Involves and is the only fund on the cap table of the Brazilian startup.

Founded in Florianópolis 16 years ago, Involves functions as an assistant for sales promoters, helping them to execute their tasks more efficiently.

In practice, Involves’ software allows promoters to consult their visit schedules on the app and analyze the goals for each visit — such as increasing share on the shelves, changing the price range of products, adding extra points, or including new merchandising materials.

“After the promoter finishes the task, they will take photos of the shelves and upload them to our platform, which uses a computer vision solution to turn those photos into data,” said André Krummenauer, founder of Involves, to Brazil Journal. “With this data, we give a score to that visit so the promoter can have visibility on how the execution went and what needs improvement.”

The startup will use the funds from the round to pay for the acquisition of Datamind — a Chilean startup that operates in 18 Latin American countries, with its revenue currently mainly coming from Mexico.

The acquisition amount was not disclosed, but André mentioned that more than half of the funds raised will be used to pay for the M&A.

Datamind generates about R$ 13 million, which will be added to the R$ 127 million Involves made last year by serving giants such as L’Oréal, Kraft Heinz, Unilever, and Pepsico.

According to the founder, there is a clear complementarity between the two companies.

“The trade promotion cycle can be divided into four stages. The first is the agreements between the industry and retail. The second is the execution of what was agreed upon. The third is compliance, to verify what was actually executed. And the fourth is optimization, which analyzes the return it brought to the industry and retail, and how to improve that return,” said André.

While Involves operates in the execution stage, Datamind is in the optimization stage.

“With Datamind, we will have sales and inventory data from retailers in more than 18 countries, and we will be able to correlate execution with results and provide suggestions on how to improve,” he said.

The acquisition also strengthens Involves’ internationalization strategy, as it already operates in 24 countries — largely due to multinational clients who took its solution abroad.

In terms of revenue, the second largest country after Brazil is Mexico, where Datamind is very strong.

“The union of the two solutions creates a very strong proposition. Datamind knows what is and isn’t selling, but there’s a big gap between having that data and doing something about it,” said André. “But since Involves has 100,000 promoters using the platform, we will be able to take that information and pass it on to them, who will be able to act on it.” 

This is the fourth acquisition for Involves since it was founded — but the first international one.

In 2017, the startup acquired the competitor Go Bee, and a year later, it purchased the computer vision solution Stringhini. More recently, it acquired Linkker, which focuses on developing tools for retail.

André said that the M&A strategy has been working well, with Involves managing to increase the revenue of all the acquired companies. “With Stringhini, for example, we took the revenue from zero to 25% of our ARR very quickly,” he said.

The founder’s plan is to make three or four more acquisitions in the next three years, and one of them is already lined up. The five-year vision is to reach a revenue of R$ 350 million, with 30% coming from outside Brazil.