Arquivei, a Brazilian startup that has built a platform for managing electronic tax documents (DFes in the Portuguese acronym), has raised a $48 million (about BRL 260 million) investment round. Series B was led by Riverwood Capital and also included International Finance Corporation (IFC), the investment arm of the World Bank, Constellation, NXTP, and Endeavor Catalyst.
Founded in 2013 by the quartet Christian de Cico, Vitor de Araujo, Isis Abbud, and Bruno Oliveira, Arquivei offers support to corporate tax compliance through a tax documents management platform. The startup’s ace in the hole was to add strategy to document management, turning the data extracted from the DFes into intelligence for several sectors of the companies, such as tax, accounting, logistics, buying, and selling.
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“Data intelligence is about companies’ behavior. If they buy in installments or not; what is the frequency of buying; what carrier they hire; what are the costs with each operation. All this provides a profile for that company and it is possible to add more predictability to the operation. The truth is that with Arquivei, all the tax documents have another value for companies”, Cico says.
The startup currently has more than 15,000 clients and more than 2.6 billion DFes stored in the platform. According to Arquivei, the company already processes 13% of all electronic invoices (NFes) issued in the country and reached BRL 1 trillion in transacted volume in 2021, a growth of 28% over the previous year.
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Through Arquivei’s platform, companies are able to consult, download, and manage tax documents from several sources, since the platform is integrated with Brazil‘s Treasury Department, and other institutions. The software is also integrated with the leading ERPs and automates all incoming invoices, becoming the company’s single source of data.
Today, tax documents have a great potential to deliver data intelligence and we want to transform bureaucracy into opportunity. Everything that is unpleasant and poorly seen in these documents, we transform into a great way of management.
CHRISTIAN DE CICO, CO-FOUNDER AND CEO OF ARQUIVEI
Arquivei works with a subscription model in which clients pay according to the volume of invoices processed, the number of offices, and the number of users. In addition, it is possible to add features to the subscription plan, such as integrations with ERP or auditing tools.
The newly raised capital will be invested in new products and solutions that allow greater access to data intelligence for its clients. Arquivei will also hire 150 more employees next year, reaching the 400-employee mark in 2022. The goal is to become a global reference in fiscal document management and strategy.
According to Cico, there is still much to be explored in this niche, especially crossing DFes management with the offer of financial services to companies.
“Brazil has currently one of the highest tax rates of the world and has standard data about all its financial transactions. This is a big plus for financial services to understanding the behavior of companies,” he explains. “We want to deliver those insights and business intelligence based on tax document data. The invoice can drive communication and lead to new business opportunities.”
