From the farm to the shelves of a grocery store or a restaurant buffet, food goes through a long supply chain marked by logistical and technological inefficiencies. Aiming to bring efficiency to it and, at the same time, help small farmers connect with restaurants and groceries in the city, making the buying and selling process more worthwhile for both parties, Brazil‘s Clicampo secured a BRL 40 million round led by Valor Capital Group and MAYA Capital funds to expand its technology.
Founded in early 2021, Clicampo comes from the personal experience of Victor Bernardino, Clicampo’s CEO: his paternal grandfather worked in family farming, and his mother worked in the restaurant industry for almost 30 years. Knowing the problems and inefficiencies in the food supply chain faced by both sellers and buyers, Bernardino decided to build a solution that could serve both. The founding team is completed by José Miguel Noblecilla (CTO), Bruno Mengatti (COO), Luiza Batista (Marketing and Sales), and Yuri Janotti (Product).
Clicampo works as a kind of supply and sales center: the startup buys fresh products from a network of partner farmers, stores these items in its own warehouses, and handles all the stages of sales and pricing, payment, picking and packing, and next-day delivery to restaurants and retailers.
Clicampo’s interface with both farmers and restaurants and groceries is WhatsApp. It is through WhatsApp that those who want to sell register and inform which products they have available, and those who want to buy access the inventory and place an order, being able to customize the ripeness, packaging, and quality of the products according to the buyer’s needs (for example, it is possible to order a kilo of green tomatoes or a six-pack of ripe tomatoes). As Bernardino explained in an interview with LABS, the startup chose a simple and intuitive sales channel like WhatApp to talk to and make the service accessible to a target audience that is not very digitized, especially among the small farmers.
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“Clicampo is building a platform with end-to-end technology and logistics to be the main outlet for small and medium-sized farmers to restaurants and groceries. Wherever there is demand for fresh food, we believe we can help. We match the right product at the right price to the right customer and offer a more convenient service, with a more attractive price than that found in other distributors,” said Bernardino.
The startup targets an audience of more than 4 million small farmers who lack the technology and logistical infrastructure to distribute their products and maintain healthy profit margins. According to Clicampo, while in the traditional supply chain the kilo of tomatoes is bought from the small farmer for BRL 2 and sold for BRL 15 due to the chain’s inefficiencies, with its business model, the startup is able to pay the farmer up to three times more and generate an economy of up to 40% for the restaurant and grocery.
Our business model is the so-called 40-40: 40% more for those who produce and 40% less for those who buy. The idea is to be an engine for repricing, making food cheaper for those who buy but ensuring fair remuneration for those who produce.
Victor Bernardino, Clicampo’s CEO
Operating for a little over a year, Clicampo does not disclose absolute numbers of its operation, such as revenues or the base of farmer partners and clients (the founders talk about a few hundred producers and almost a thousand clients), but claims to have a growth of 40% month over month. Clicampo expects to end the year selling an average of 3,000 tons of fresh food per month.
The funds raised will be used to expand into other cities and to increase the team, currently composed of 70 people mostly focused on engineering and product, and to increase demand with new sales sectors, such as large restaurant chains, and e-grocery startups.
According to Michael Nicklas, partner at Valor Capital Group, and Monica Saggioro, partner at MAYA Capital, Clicampo has built a business model that solves inefficiencies that hurt both ends of one of Brazil‘s largest supply chains.
“Finding suppliers with the required quality standard and efficient delivery process is a major difficulty in this sector. Clicampo not only makes the supply process easier for restaurants but also generates extra income for rural producers,” said Saggioro. “Clicampo embraces a social and economic development mission that we believe in,” added Nicklas.
