Ótimo Gestor: rental management software startup handles BRL 5 billion per year in Brazil

LABS spoke with Sérgio Bueno, CEO of Ótimo Gestor, about the shared assets market

01.Aug.2021 14:17 BRT
UPDATED 14:32 BRT

Founded in 2016 by Sérgio Bueno, who was director of Information Technology at Siemens, the Brazilian startup Ótimo Gestor was born to surf the wave of the “shared property market”.

Bueno, the CEO, told LABS that, heavily propped up by millennials, the rental model is a great business trend at the moment. “We needed a system to take care of these new economy companies that were emerging focused on renting,” he recalls. So Ótimo Gestor emerged as an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) to support these companies.

“Young people have been driving this market. Young people aged 19 don’t want to own a car, they rent vehicles when they need to travel or use Uber. This has gone from mobile phones to construction equipment, to medical equipment, with aesthetic clinics that rent equipment, for example,” he says.

Although Brazil has large rental companies, such as Unidas and Movida in the car rental sector, and Loft, QuintoAndar, VivaReal, and Zap, in the real estate rental sector, Bueno wanted to create a system focused exclusively on rental in five segments: construction, events, IT, medical and hospital, and equipment. “We wanted to democratize rental,” he says.

The company serves, for example, the Brazilian brewing company Ambev. All the leasing of beer kegs of Ambev in Brazil is made by the Ótimo Gestor system. The software has today more than 800 client companies that generate leases daily, and, since its creation, it has grown almost 600%.

The system processes BRL 400,000 per month and Ótimo Gestor handles almost BRL 5 billion per year with the rents. “With the pandemic, everyone had to go home. Entrepreneurs had to bet on the new. So, for Ótimo Gestor, this helped. This year we have already had 60% growth and we want to reach 100 employees by the end of the year”, he states.

Subscription model

The ERP works in a subscription model, like Netflix. So, instead of buying ERP licenses for implementation – which are usually expensive – companies subscribe to the Ótimo Gestor system.

The startup recently launched a second product, similar to what VTEX [a Brazilian company focused on e-commerce software] offers, Eloca. Eloca makes a virtual showcase for rental companies. The difference is that VTEX sells and Eloca makes leases.

The new platform has 60 customers and also works by a monthly subscription of BRL 100. “With the pandemic, we saw many businesses that rented closing. So we created this custom site for renters,” explains Bueno.

Both products were created from scratch, with Ótimo Gestor’s own technology.

The startup was founded with Bueno’s own capital and partners and so far has not made any investment round. “But we’ve already had about five companies looking for us, it is a very strong business,” he said.

Ótimo Gestor has invested in Eloca and bet on the scale of the product since it is easier to grow the platform than an ERP, which directly handles companies’ processes.

The idea is to take Eloca to Mexico. “Mexico is a big market with 130 million inhabitants, next to the U.S., but it is still far behind when it comes to leasing. Eloca’s platform is already in English, Spanish and Portuguese. Maybe this year we will start to have some initiatives in Mexico”, he explains.

The ERP, on the other hand, carries bureaucratic and legal issues from Brazil, such as issuing invoices, which is more difficult to export. “But, for sure, whoever delivers ERP in Brazil delivers it anywhere in the world, because Brazil is very complex.”