- Brazilian sales and management app Kyte has 25,000 users worldwide;
- The startup raised a BRL 5.5 million seed round to expand the team and develop new features for its application, aimed at small businesses in over 140 countries.
From the Brazilian southern city of Florianópolis, the sales and management platform Kyte has gained extra fuel this week to digitize small businesses around the world. The startup announced a BRL 5.5 million seed round – its first one – led by funds DGF Investimentos, Honey Island Capital and Caravela.
Founded in 2018, Kyte, which has a team of 25 people, has its app adopted by over 25 thousand users spread in 143 countries, mainly the U.S., Mexico and the Philippines, in addition to Brazil.
The newly announced resources will support Kyte’s continued expansion and growing global customer base. The growth strategy will be focused on three pillars: expansion of the team, investment in marketing and development of new resources for the application. Kyte expects to double the size of the team by the first half of 2021.
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“We are happy to be able to choose the ideal partners for this round, which, in addition to capital, can help us with knowledge, experience and networking, aspects as important as money for the challenges of a scaleup,” Kyte’s CEO Guilherme Hernandez pointed out.
According to the company, it plans to further expand the app to web and tablet platforms, as well as focusing on integrations for sales through social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
As for new solutions, Kyte intends to invest in payment processing to enhance its offer and help the management of small businesses with Kyte Pay. Currently, the application accepts online payment by card, digital wallet, payment link and has an integration with SumUP and Mercado Pago POS terminals.
For Mariana Foresti, managing partner at Honey Island Capital, “Kyte intends to offer a complete experience, from the choice of the product or service to the completion of the transaction, combining financial services and ease, something that matches our fintech expertise.” The VC firm was created by the founders of the global fintech EBANX.
With a wide business footprint in over 140 countries, Kyte’s founders credit the company’s rapid expansion to a product-led growth strategy, making the product available to customers as quickly as possible so they realize its value and end up subscribing to it. Through this method, Kyte says it was able to launch the app worldwide without having to put a specific staff and set up a physical presence in other countries.
“We used to say that Kyte was born globally. I already had an international experience at another company where we realized that the basic under-served pains of the small retailer were the same all over the world. So, we launched the first version of the application in Portuguese, English and Spanish, imagining the wide range of countries where we would like to operate,” Hernandez explains.
Born to democratize access to sales and management tools – mainly for freelancers and small entrepreneurs – Kyte gathers in a mobile application resources that were once only available in desktop software.
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“The app started out as a mobile point of sale, but over time, we have been expanding and introducing new important features,” the exec sums up.
Currently, Kyte’s platform has resourcers such as product and customer registration, inventory control, order management, invoice issuance, and integration with social networks.
As 2020 forced businesses to fast-paced digitization, Kyte hit a 217% growth in the customer base and 331% increase in revenue. The startups has its 10 most strategic markets in the U.S., Mexico, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Argentina, Chile, the UK and Spain, in addition to Brazil, which gathers about 45% of the app’s users. With a free and paid application, Kyte has 22,000 paid subscribers on its pro version. In Brazil, this plan costs BRL 19.90 a month.
