Smartbrain, a company founded in 2014 that offers tools for companies and investment professionals, has just received US$ 10 million from Inovabra Ventures, a proprietary capital fund launched by Bradesco in 2016 that has already invested in 11 startups. The fund is managed by the bank’s private equity and venture capital area, and the operation was assisted by 2bCapital, a private equity manager controlled by Bradesco.
According to information distributed to the press, the fund becomes a “relevant partner in the company.” The resources will be used to improve and develop new products for Smartbrain’s portfolio, in addition to marketing and acquisitions.
Smartbrain’s target audience is made up of wealth managers, family offices, AAIs, investment consultants and planners, brokers, distributors, and investment platforms in general, who are looking for solutions to manage their portfolios. They are basically dashboards, Saas platforms, APIs already developed along the lines of open finance and with AI features to help professionals in their management work.
The company presents itself as a leader in the sector, currently consolidating more than BRL 210 billion and processing more than 300,000 statements per day.
“Our estimate is to grow ten times over the next few years, reaching more than 3 million extracts processed per day,” said Henrique Garcia, co-founder and CEO of Smartbrain, in a press release.
The company’s growth is driven by the development of the investment market in Brazil. According to Smartbrain, there are more than 15,000 professionals in the country today, apart from managers, consultants, and financial planners. The company estimates that this market will soon have more than 50,000 professionals.
“The deal with Bradesco PE & VC was excellent and met the objectives of Smartbrain’s founding partners, as it will maintain the company’s initial focus and will further accelerate organic growth and through acquisitions,” commented Cassio Bariani, co-founder of the company, also in the press release.
The relationship between the company and the fund was born from InovaBRA’s initiative to select technology providers for the segment of investment portfolio consolidation. Smartbrain competed with several other providers and was chosen as the official supplier for Bradesco. As a result, the bank is using Smartbrain’s systems to control the investments and assets of its high net worth clients and now intends to expand this use to its investment area and the brokerage firm Ágora.
“Smartbrain’s technological and security capabilities were a differential in choosing the partnership, as we are very advanced in the use of the cloud with microservices architecture, micro frontends, and APIs. Now we will also explore even more complex solutions such as analytics, timely decisions real life, using AI and blockchain,” said Ailton Torres, CTO.
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“We are very pleased with this transaction, as it will allow us to broaden the understanding of the customer’s moment of life, regardless of which products and homes they focus their investments. Open banking will bring many benefits to the customer, and we want to encourage and actively participate in this movement”, comments Rafael Padilha, director of Bradesco PE & VC.
In addition to Bradesco, several other financial institutions and investment distribution platforms already use Smartbrain solutions.
The operation was advised by Volt Partners and Levy Salomão Advogados on the Smartbrain side and by BZCP Advogados on the 2B Capital side.
