Brazil's Invillia targets agtechs, LatAm growth and Europe expansion
Brazilian IT services and consultancy Invillia, part of the Compass UOL tech group, plans to expand its footprint in Europe in 2023, at the same time as continuing to strengthen its operations in Latin America, CEO Renato Bolzan told BNamericas.
Another investment front for the firm the year is agribusiness and the company will shortly announce a new internal unit dedicated to solutions for agtechs, said the executive.
“Invillia started its project to enter the European market in 2018. We started in the Netherlands, creating digital products for some fintechs. It was a period of great learning where we studied and mapped the main markets. This led us to open two strategic hubs, one in Lisbon and the other in London,” said Bolzan.
“These are hubs that we've maintained until today, even though Invillia is 100% widespread, with people across more than 260 different cities around the world. This model also allows us to serve customers in the US and Mexico,” he added.
In Latin America, Invillia has clients in the financial, insurance, logistics and retail sectors, according to the executive. He also said that at least one in five Brazilian unicorns, in addition to other major players, develop their digital solutions with the company.
Bolzan projects that 2023 will be a positive year for business, albeit not as strong as 2021 and early 2022.
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France-based group Publicis acquired Argentine IT firm Practia to move into digital transformation offerings in Latin America and double down on the region’s nearshoring attributes.
With the acquisition, the terms of which were not disclosed, Practia will become part of Publicis Sapient, the group's digital business transformation arm. The operation marks the entry of the European company into Latin America.
With the deal, Publicis Sapient will also "lay the groundwork for a nearshore delivery platform," especially for North America, adding Latin America as its third global IT delivery hub in addition to India and Eastern Europe, the company said.
Founded in Buenos Aires in 1995, Practia has offices in Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Brazil, Colombia and Spain, a commercial presence in Uruguay and the US, and a team of 1,200 people focused on solutions, digital transformation, engineering, technology, data and artificial intelligence.
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Latin American unicorn Globant, founded in Buenos Aires and currently based in Luxembourg, bought the Brazilian consultancy and integrator Nèscara for an undisclosed sum.
Nèscara is specialized in the Salesforce platform.
The acquisition is intended to complement the services Globant provides, especially in terms of CRM. Nèscara adds more than 100 clients from different verticals, such as agribusiness, consumer goods, manufacturing and pharma.
“We chose Nèscara for its experience and capacity for local expansion, which is in line with our growth strategy with Salesforce. This also applies to Nèscara's presence in targeted sectors such as agribusiness," Ignacio Iglesias, Globant's chief business officer in Latin America, said in a statement.
"In addition, we have a very significant Salesforce operation in Brazil and together with Nèscara we will reinforce our expansion," he added.
Globant is expanding rapidly, particularly inorganically. Among its bigger deals, the group last year announced the purchase of Genexus, one of the largest and oldest IT companies in Uruguay, specializing in programming and low code development.
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Argentine IT firm Technisys has merged with US financial services company Galileo Financial Technologies with the goal of creating a “one-of-a-kind” hybrid financial services platform.
Both companies are owned by SoFi Technologies, which last year paid US$1.1bn to take over Technisys.
With the merger, the duo announced the offer of Galileo’s Cyberbank suite as a managed service platform. The launch of Cyberbank Digital comes on the heels of the introduction of Cyberbank Core from Technisys.
“Cyberbank Digital is a robust, end-to-end solution that empowers financial institutions and fintechs to create and deliver exceptional, digital-first tailored customer journeys, with the option to integrate conversational AI capabilities, across all devices and conversational apps – with speed and scale,” Galileo said in a release.
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Latin American crypto exchange Ripio, a partner of MercadoLibre’s fintech MercadoPago for crypto trading, is taking the e-commerce giant’s virtual currency service to Chile.
Ripio also announced the launch of trading operations in Colombia, in partnership with local digital wallet Finzi.
Through an integration, users of the two fintechs will be able to buy and sell cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and USD coin (USDC) directly through their applications, without having to leave the platform, Ripio said in a statement.
“Entering the cryptocurrency business is one more step towards continuing to transform and expand access to financial services in Chile and Latin America. Through this new service, we seek to give millions of Chileans access to the crypto world in an educational, safe and simple way, in order to generate greater financial inclusion,” said Matías Spagui, senior director of Mercado Pago Chile.
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