A platform for creating loyalty and incentive programs iClubs raised R$ 5 million from investment bank BTG Pactual. The Brazilian startup announced the capital injection this Wednesday (6).
iClubs defines itself as a loyaltytech — a B2B technological platform for creating and managing loyalty programs and corporate incentives. The startup was founded in 2020 by entrepreneurs Rodrigo Bornholdt, Livio França, and Pablo Augusto.
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The company plans to hire more developers to expand its technology team after the capital raise. Currently, the startup’s team has 28 employees and the company says it will have 40 by the end of this year. The expectation for 2022 is further increasing its number of customers as well.
“We found a market with a strong search for solutions to customize loyalty programs, and now we have the conditions to serve the entire Brazilian market and beyond”, explains the iClubs’ CEO, Pablo Augusto.
Today, the biggest challenge in the market is to customize loyalty programs, which we do with data organization and orchestration technology on our platform.
Pablo Augusto, CEO of iClubs
According to Augusto, another challenge for companies is to integrate its systems with data lakes or partners’ solutions. Thus, the startup developed an API first architecture in its platform so that integrations are easier.
From accelerated to founded
This is not the first interaction between the startup and BTG Pactual: iClubs was selected in the latest batch of boostLAB acceleration program, the business hub from the investment bank.
“We watched closely the evolution of the company’s business model and realized the great potential of the team and the solution”, says Frederico Pompeu, BTG Pactual partner and responsible for boostLAB.
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The startup’s main client is BTG+ — BTG’s digital retail bank — but iClubs expects to reach the mark of ten clients of similar size by the end of 2022. “In 2022 we also intend to open our APIs for companies of any size to create their programs and thus our growth will be exponential”, explains iClubs CEO.
iClubs’ inception was motivated by its partners noticing that there were a lot of complaints from large companies about suppliers in the loyalty segment, and foreign companies were predominant for this kind of incentive and benefits services.
According to the startup, its differential lies in the possibility of serving large companies with technology that allows the creation and management of loyalty programs, enabling more flexible, contextual and relevant programs for users.
