Business

Brazil-based Olist acquires not one, but two startups to expand its retail solutions

Brazilian startup bought ERP Tiny and e-commerce platform Vnda; Olist reaches the fourth acquisition after Series D round led by SoftBank

Olist buys Tiny and Vnda to expand solutions in order to digitize retail — Photo: Eduardo Macarios/Courtesy

Carolina Pompeo

29.Oct.2021 08:00 BRT

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SoftBank-funded Brazilian e-commerce platform Olist announced not one, but two new acquisitions: Tiny, an online management system for small and medium-sized businesses, and the e-commerce platform Vnda. Olist bought 100% of the companies; the terms of the deals were not disclosed.

Tiago Dalvi, Olist’s founder and CEO, explained to LABS that the acquisition of Tiny and Vnda is strategic for the startup, whose core business is helping physical stores get into digital sales through a complete e-commerce solutions platform. This is why the company has invested massively in technology and in bolstering its ecosystem with complementary solutions for sales.

“We have speeded up the entry of new merchants and this has made us improve our product a lot, but it is not always possible to build in-house solutions, so we have gone out looking for new partners. Tiny and Vnda came up with the solutions to meet our current needs. For example, today 60% of Olist’s customer base does not have an ERP solution,” he said.

Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Bento Gonçalves city, Tiny is an ERP focused on the e-commerce segment and small- and medium-sized businesses. Its SaaS solutions help the management and business organization through modules for invoicing, electronic invoice issuance, product catalog management, inventory, and multichannel sales, financial management, integration with e-commerce platforms, marketplaces, and logistics solutions, among others.

Tiago Dalvi, CEO at Olist, and Rogério Tessari, CEO at Tiny. Photo: Olist/Courtesy

Also in the market for a decade, Vnda is an omnichannel e-commerce platform that enables retailers to sell across multiple channels and consolidates physical and digital sales on a single platform. With expertise in Digitally Native Vertical Brand, Vnda works on the digitization of traditional retailers, helping companies implement customer referral programs and customized service, among others.

Gustavo Reis and Denis Osório, Vnda’s co-founders, and Tiago Dalvi. Photo: Olist/Courtesy

Tiny and Vnda’s decade-long experience in their segments was a key factor for Olist. “We know that this is a relevant factor when compared to starting to build a robust solution from scratch,” Dalvi said.

Tiny and Vnda will keep their team and product strategies independent; Rogério Tessari, CEO and co-founder of Tiny, and Dênis Osório and Gustavo Reis, co-founders at Vnda, continue to lead operations. Neither of both talks about their operations or revenues. But, according to Olist, the startup expects to triple its growth by 2022.

With Tiny and Vnda, Olist has already made four acquisitions in the last twelve months, since it raised a $310 million Series D round led by SoftBank. At the time, the startup also announced the purchase of Clickspace, a marketplace solutions startup. Soon after, it bought PAX, a logistics company, to expand cross-docking activities by six times (a distribution system where the product is dispatched to a distribution center and redistributed to the consumer promptly).

Olist does not rule out new acquisitions in the future, based on market intelligence, logistics, and financial services, all focused on the startup’s long-term strategy. “We don’t have a set number, but it is on our radar to keep looking for companies that can add value to our services, always thinking about the merchant, our client,” concluded Dalvi.