RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazilian startup Wiboo, which has developed a loyalty and engagement program on blockchain with its cryptocurrency Wibx, announced on Wednesday, April 28th, that it has received a R$15 (US$2.78) million investment from Shibata Group, a supermarket chain with 26 stores in São Paulo state.
According to Wiboo, the investment will allow the company to “expand its operation, hire new professionals, structure the business processes and improve the platform.” The startup is the creator of WiBX, a utility token traded on Mercado Bitcoin exchange and that reached record trading in early March, when it totaled R$178 million in traded volume in 24 hours.
“As a large retail chain used to the pains of the market and to the challenges of effectively conducting digital marketing, the Shibata Group saw the perfect opportunity to be at the forefront with an innovation that will help it in its campaigns and also place it at the vanguard of innovation,” said Pedro Alexandre, Wiboo’s CEO and founder.
According to the startup, the investment will enable it to expand innovations in its solutions, such as the implementation of automated processes with artificial intelligence to improve the identity verification of its users (KYC). Other actions consist of the creation of new research fronts and the expansion of partnership with the Aeronautical Technological Institute (ITA), one of the most important in the country, based in São José dos Campos (SP), the same city as the startup. These new fronts include fraud prevention, behavioral biometrics, and artificial intelligence.
“At the Shibata Group, we are alert to all innovation and technology initiatives. And we are betting on WiBX because it is something new, bold and promising,” explained Eric Shibata, Marketing Director of the Shibata Group, founded in Mogi das Cruzes (SP) in 1976.
Initially created as a social commerce company focused on loyalty programs, Wiboo is an online engagement platform that uses its native cryptocurrency, Wibx, a utility token, as the basis for companies’ and advertisers’ campaigns. The goal is to transform ordinary users into micro-influencers on social networks, to attract new consumers, with a proposal to reduce acquisition costs compared to existing digital media.
According to the company, the proposal is to “act as a media uberization with the security of blockchain.”
In 2021, the price of the cryptocurrency skyrocketed nearly 450%, from US$0.005 in January to US$0.027 today, according to CoinMarketCap website.
Source: Exame