French startup Swile turns unicorn and targets Brazil

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The French company’s CEO and founder Loïc Soubeyrand says an IPO (initial stock offering) should occur in about 5 years. By then, the startup aims to be worth 10 times more.

SoftBank itself should invest even more in the next few years, given that it has US$3 billion to spend in the region.

Swile currently holds 15% of employee benefits in France, the second largest market in this segment worldwide – however, Brazil is the global leader. “The corporate benefits market in Brazil handles R$150 billion per year,” says Swile’s director in Brazil Marcelo Ramos. By 2024, the goal is for Latin America to be the company’s main market.

Choosing SoftBank as a long-term investor is due to the bank’s expertise in the region, given that the investment comes from the institution’s specialized Latin America arm. Founded in 2018, Swile owns an app offering diverse benefits, engagement tools (such as awards and celebrations), satisfaction surveys and feedback.

There is also the Swile Card, which allows using the benefits in an associated network. The goal is to centralize all benefits granted to employees in a single platform, in a flexible way. According to the startup, all features will soon be introduced to the Brazilian market. In total, there are 500,000 users and 15,000 corporate clients, including Carrefour, Le Monde, PSG, Airbnb, Spotify, Red Bull, TikTok, Whirlpool, Amaro, Bayer, and Fiat.

In Brazil, the investment should result in more hires. “We expect to expand the company’s staff, totaling 700 employees in Latin America by 2022,” Soubeyrand says.

Asked about the challenge in finding talent in the technology area in Brazil, the CEO says that Swile has a center of developers and innovation with professionals working remotely from different regions and countries.

According to acceleration platform Distrito’s CEO Gustavo Araújo, Swile is investing in Brazil at a good time. He says that Brazilian investors awoke to the world of technology 12 or 18 months ago – a fertile ground also for foreign capital, because while in China and the USA technology companies are already the most valuable, the same is not true in Brazil.