Olist Becomes Brazil’s Newest Unicorn, Raises $186M

Miami — Today, Latin America crowns a new unicorn: Olist, the Brazilian company that’s the leading e-commerce enabler ecosystem in Latam and which operates in 3 areas: commerce, logistics and capital. The company is now valued at $1.5 billion and it’s CEO was named by Bloomberg Línea as a “LatAm’s 100 Entrepreneurs of 2021.”

The company just raised a $186 million Series E round (R $1 billion), just 8 months after its Series D. Wellington Management led this round with participation from SoftBank, Corton Capital, Valor Capital, Goldman Sachs, Globo Ventures, among others. It was previously reported that Olist had plans to go public after its Series D, so that could be some upcoming news.

Olist connects small businesses to larger product marketplaces to help entrepreneurs sell their products to a larger customer base.

“With more than 45,000 vendors, Olist has always been at the forefront of e-commerce, way before the hype around e-commerce and its growth in the last few years, which made our solutions even more attractive. With the new funding, we’re planning to go way beyond the services we offer today, and bring even more value to our clients,” said Tiago Dalvi, founder and CEO of Olist.

“Latin America harbors roughly 300 million digital buyers, a figure forecast to grow over 20 percent by 2025. Although the adoption of e-commerce in this part of the world is still lower than in other emerging regions, online retail sales in Latin America are expected to reach 85 billion U.S. dollars in 2021 and hit 160 billion by 2025. On a regional level, Brazil and Mexico compete for the spotlight, accounting for 31 percent and 28 percent of the Latin American e-commerce market, respectively,” according to Statista.

In the last year alone, the company has grown 3x, which is in no doubt part of the pandemic-infused boom that e-commerce has experienced in the last few years.

As part of its growth strategy, the company has acquired 4 companies in the last 12 months. At the end of 2020, Olist bought Clickspace, a social commerce platform, and PAX, a logitech which now fuels its logistics business. In 2021, we saw the acquisitions of VNDA and Tiny ERP.

“2021 was a fantastic year for Olist in many ways. Today, there is no limit to innovating in e-commerce, and Olist has always been at the forefront of the sector, driving changes in the market. We are true to our essence and will remain focused on accelerating our customers’ sales, wherever they happen. In the future, the duality between on and offline will not exist and multichannel systems will become the rule. We have become a complete operating system for brands and retailers to run and expand their business, and this contribution will give us even more conditions to continue developing our strategy and helping thousands of companies”, said Dalvi.