Peixe Urbano, Brazil’s largest daily deal site (Groupon is a close second), has closed a “significant growth capital” investment from General Atlantic and Tiger Global Management, the company tells me. The size of the round isn’t being disclosed, but these firms only tend to get involved when at least tens of millions of dollars, and often hundreds of millions, are invested. This was a primary funding, nothing was taken off the table by founders or existing investors.
It was only a few months ago that the company announced that Benchmark Capital had invested. Why the new round?
Growth, apparently. Last October, says CEO Julio Vasconcellos, the company had about 1 million registered users. Today they have 9 million, and have sold 5 million “units,” or deals. The average deal price is currently in the $25-$30 range, so it’s not hard to take a guess at revenue. Nearly all of this is from Brazil, although the company did recently launch in Argentina as well, and will eventually spread throughout Latin America. Even Mexico is in their crosshairs.
That’s not bad for a startup that only launched a year ago. Today they have 600 employees, with about half in sales.
Another interesting factoid about Peixe Urbano: They’ve imported a dozen American engineers, product managers and designers. It’s not outsourcing, and it’s not insourcing. It’s something unique, and you don’t hear about Non-U.S. startups hiring and moving Americans to wherever they are very often. Perhaps we’ll see more of this over time. The company has hired people from Apple, Intuit, Tagged, Merchant Circle and other companies.
So if you’re an American techy and you want to get paid (including stock options) to go hang out in Brazil for a few years, you know where to send your resume.
Update: coincidentally, General Atlantic has also invested in Groupalia, a Spain-based daily deal site operator that is eying expansion in Latin America, Brazil and Mexico in particular.
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See an earlier video interview we did with Vasoncellos here.
Disclosure: I’m a limited partner in Benchmark Capital’s newest fund, but not in the fund that invested in Peixe Urbano.
