This is Part 5 of Brazilstrat’s series about the Brazilian Unicorns. Links to the other parts can be found here: “Part 1 – Introduction and Summary”; “Part 2 – Nubank”; “Part 3 – Wildlife Studios”; “Part 4 – iFood”; “Part 6 – QuintoAndar”; “Part 7 – Ebanx”; “Part 8 – Loft”; and “Part 9 – Gympass”.

Brazilstrat is a boutique consulting firm specializing in assisting growth companies with interest in the Brazilian market. Located in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, we work with clients who have a business model we believe stands a good chance of success in Brazil, and who operate in an area where we can add significant value through our own experience and network.

Are you considering a Brazil market entry for your growth company, or do you want to know more about Brazilstrat and our reference projects? Contact us to schedule a call.

Loggi

Loggi is a delivery and logistics company making three million monthly deliveries in 33 Brazilian cities through a fleet of 25 thousand motorcycles and other vehicles [22]. The company was founded in São Paulo in 2013 by Fabien Mendez (CEO), originally from France, and the two Brazilians Arthur Debert (CPO), and Eduardo Wexler, starting out with a focus on document deliveries. Loggi has later expanded into deliveries for e-commerce, a market which in Brazil grew 12% in 2018 to 53.5 billion BRL, as well as wholesale food and courier services. With 12.7% of GDP being spent on logistics, storage and transportation in Brazil, compared to 7.8% in the US, Loggi operates in a market with both significant size and improvement potential [21]. According to a LinkedIn ranking, Loggi was the sixth most popular startup to work for in Brazil in 2019[39].

Originally from France, Loggi’s CEO, Fabien Mendez, has a master’s degree in finance and strategy from Sciences Po Paris, and also spent a year studying business administration at Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) in Brazil. He summarizes his work experience prior to founding Loggi on his LinkedIn profile as a starting out as a “PowerPoint monkey” at JP Morgan in Paris before moving to São Paulo for a “Honeymoon with Excel” at BNP Paribas and a “Combination of the below with a cooler title” at EY, before a year of “Epic fail” as co-founder and CEO at GoJames, a high-end ride-hauling startup [20].

Before Loggi, USP economics and FAAP cinema graduate Arthur Debert worked six years at his own development studio before spending three years as developer and CTO at marketing and advisory agency Gringu.nu, and two additional years as Technical Lead at Participatory Culture Foundation (PCF), which creates open-source video tools. Arhur had the CTO role during the first two and a half years after co-founding Loggi before becoming responsible for product design as Chief Product Officer in January 2016[18].

Eduardo Wexler is also a FAAP graduate. After getting his graphic design bachelor, he spent four years working with video editing and interface design. He founded Ololô in 2001, where he was responsible for concept creation of digital multimedia interactive projects for almost ten years, including as Senior Art Director after Ololô teamed up with Agencia Click, Latin America’s biggest interactive agency in 2007. In the period leading up to Loggi, Wexler worked one and a half years as Advertising Manager at Brazil’s largest platform for local deals, Peixe Urbano, and eight months as Product Lead at the Brazilian market research app PiniOn. Eduardo left Loggi in December 2017, and has both before and after advised, mentored, and invested in several startups. Currently based in Tokyo, Wexler has been working as Design Lead at Identity Japan since July 2018[19].

Loggi achieved Unicorn status in June 2019 in a $150 million round led by SoftBank where GGV Capital, Fifth Wall, Velt Partners, and Microsoft also participated. The raise was primarily to fund further expansion of its technical staff to more than a thousand developers after having “aqui-hired” about 400 engineers through its takeover of the AI focused publicity and internet startup WorldSense in 2018[21]. About 80% of the $145 million Loggi had raised in its previous rounds had been spent on identifying and setting up logistics hubs for geographical expansion.

Loggi has raised a total of $295 million in seven financing rounds between August 2013 and June 2019 as summarized below.

  1. Seed in August 2013: $1 million from São Paulo-based Iporanga Ventures.
  2. Series A in August 2014: $3 million from São Paulo-based Monashees; and San Diego, California-based Qualcomm Ventures.
  3. Series B in August 2015: $15 million from San Francisco-based Dragoneer Investment Group.
  4. Series C in February 2017: $15 million from Washington DC-based IFC Venture Capital Group; and Microsoft.
  5. Non-equity assistance in November 2017: $1 million from Google.
  6. Series D in October 2018: $111 million from Buenos Aires and São Paulo-based Kaszek Ventures; and the Japanese SoftBank Vision Fund.
  7. Series E in June 2019: $150 million. Investors: Tokyo-based Softbank (lead); São Paulo-based Velt Partners; Menlo Park, California-based GGV Capital; Venice, California-based Fifth Wall; and Microsoft.