- Brazilian tech services company Tivit was founded more than 20 years ago and operates in about 10 countries in Latin America;
- The company will secure BRL 400 million for acquisitions until 2025, a strategy that will be led by the newly formed Tivit Ventures;
- Acquisitions will focus on segments such as internet of things, industry 4.0 and cloud computing.
The Brazilian technology services company Tivit launched this month a strategy to accelerate its business through acquisitions, focusing on areas such as cybersecurity and artificial intelligence at a time when the pandemic continues to force companies to digitize.
Founded more than 20 years ago and operating in about 10 countries in Latin America, the company holds BRL 400 million for acquisitions until 2025, a strategy that will be led by the newly formed Tivit Ventures unit and targets segments such as internet of things, industry 4.0 and cloud computing.
“The goal is to buy SaaS startups to bring companies that already have a scalable product to support growth,” said Eduardo Sodero, director of acquisitions at Tivit and who until three months ago was in charge of Colombian Rappi’s supermarket unit.
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“We are looking for good cars and drivers and we will fill up the tank so the driver can only think about speeding up,” said Sodero, adding that Tivit will use its own resources in the strategy and that the acquisitions will be 100% of the startups or under their control.
Tivit’s last acquisition took place in 2019: the Rio de Janeiro based startup Stone Age, focused on big data, which became one of Tivit Ventures’ first companies. Before that, Tivit made an acquisition in 2016. The new plan, according to Sodero, involves the purchase of up to 10 companies per year by Tivit.
The strategy was launched amid the dispute between Stone and Totvs by the retail software company Linx, and while the country’s payments market has undergone a revolution, with the emergence of hundreds of companies competing in the segment.
Sodero said the timing of Tivit Ventures’ announcement was a coincidence with the dispute for Linx and that the investment fund Apax Partners, which bought the company in 2010, “is satisfied with the growth” that the company has shown. The exec did not give details about Tivit’s financial performance, but said that the company’s revenue is around BRL 1.8 billion.
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“Technology is increasingly accelerating. And Tivit understands that it also has to accelerate… for complementing our portfolio”, said Sodero. He explained that information technology solutions are focusing on solving more and more specific problems in an increasingly more efficient way, which forces the need to offer multiple products to customers.
An example of this is the cybersecurity area, which took shape this year at Tivit. “We always provide ‘cybersecurity’ services, but the market is becoming increasingly complex and demanding new services and products,” said Sodero. He added that this demand was boosted by the pandemic, with many companies now having a large part of the workforce working from home.
This year, large companies in the country announced problems with hacker attacks. The most recent was the car rental company Unidas, which said on Monday it suffered a “security incident” on Sunday that disrupted the operation of some technology systems. Before that, petrochemical Braskem reported in October an attempted ransomware attack and cosmetics manufacturer Natura announced in June that it had been the target of a hacker attack.
“With people working from home, the risks of attacks only increase,” said Sodero. “Several companies have been looking for us to help them at this time and then we see the opportunity to bring these new solutions,” said the executive, referring to the digitization processes accelerated by the pandemic.
Translated by LABS
