- Olist’s revenue tripled in Q1 2021 compared to the previous year;
- The funds will help consolidate Olist’s accelerated growth strategy, including investing in technology and products, pursuing new mergers and acquisitions and boosting internationalization.
SoftBank-funded Brazilian e-commerce platform Olist announced on Thursday that it secured a $23 million dollar investment round led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management, a new investor to the company.
READ ALSO: Olist raises BRL 310 million round from SoftBank and announces Clickspace acquisition
Brazilian fund Redpoint eventures, an investor since 2015, also increased its participation in Olist’s fundraising, which is part 2 of its Series D closing that now totals $80 million. In November 2020, SoftBank led the first part with a BRL 310 million infusion, with the participation of Valor Capital, Velt Partners, FJ Labs,Península, and investor Kevin Efrusy.
Founded in 2015, Olist helps brick-and-mortar stores enter the world of online sales through a platform. The service’s demand soared in 2020 when physical stores began to close due to isolation measures to contain the coronavirus, and in the first quarter of 2021, Olist’s revenue tripled compared to the previous year.
“The results of Q4 and the beginning of Q1 were very good and showed that we could further accelerate our growth and execution of our plan. So we did this extension of the round to bring a partner from the Goldman Sachs level,” Saulo Marti, CMO at Olist, told LABS. The company didn’t disclose its valuation.
According to Olist, conversations with Goldman Sachs have been around since last year, but the US bank was strict in its diligence and the process was only completed now, four months after the SoftBank round.
Now, Goldman Sachs is part of Olist’s board. The funds will help consolidate Olist’s accelerated growth strategy, including investing in technology and products, pursuing new mergers and acquisitions (Recently, Olist acquired the logistics startup PAX and e-commerce firm Clickspace) boosting its internationalization process, and building a unique e-commerce ecosystem.
“Olist has been international since last year. We are present in more than 180 countries with Olist Shops. And this year we are going to intensify internationalization even more with other products of ours,” added Marti.
PAX’s solution within Olist, renamed Olist Pax, currently has more than 4,000 registered drivers and provides a complete logistical service, with first and last miles, in addition to 20 cross-docking hubs.
Via Olist Shops, users can create a virtual showcase in less than 3 minutes, complete with payment checkout tools and integration with logistics operators. Shops was designed to be global, with interfaces in Portuguese, English, and Spanish, and since its launch, it has attracted more than 200,000 users.
On its behalf, Olist Store, the company’s flagship product that offers logistics, store payments, and managing product listings and reputation, operates under the shop-in-shop model and is present at Brazil’s main marketplaces: Mercado Libre, B2W, and Via Varejo. Olist Store had a record GMV in the first half of 2020, totaling 2.5 times more than the amount recorded over the same period in 2019.
