Brazil’s Méliuz buys startup Promobit for R$13 million in third acquisition after IPO

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Méliuz, known for its cashback services, is increasing the power of its “pick in the e-commerce gold rush,” as co-founder Israel Salmen often describes the business.

The company on Wednesday, May 12, announced the acquisition of startup Promobit, which manages an online community of over 1 million people who share discounts and recommend products.

The purchase of 100% of the company’s capital was paid with a check for R$13 (US$2.45) million, but sellers may receive an additional sum depending on the achievement of certain operational goals – the so-called earnout. With the acquisition, Méliuz will compete with Mosaico, owner of price comparison platforms Zoom, Buscapé and Bondfaro, which debuted on the B3 stock exchange in February.

With the brands Méliuz and Promobit under the same umbrella, the Minas Gerais-based company increases its clout with customers: the networks that link promotions to its system. The company alone counts some 16 million consumers plugged into the platform or the company’s app – the pick Salmen refers to.

With Promobit, it gets a larger number of users without having to increase acquisition costs. “Acquiring users online is getting more and more expensive, but we like to pay little. To do this, we need to be present with good products in qualified traffic journeys. Promobit is one of the players that helps us to be present at various moments of the purchase cycle,” says Méliuz’s founder and president.

Founded in 2013 by partners Fabio Carneiro, Leandro Menezes dos Anjos and Raphael Pawlik, Promobit is an indirect competitor to Méliuz’s cashback business. The company has created a platform that receives about 10.4 million hits per month for sharing discounts. There, users post the offers they find at major e-commerce retailers and discuss with other members in the community whether the product in question is worth it or not. The detail is that no user is remunerated for referrals – it is like a more robust version of the traditional internet forums.

The startup’s role in these interactions is to validate whether the discounts are real and to prevent fraud. It profits by monetizing the links shared on its network with retailers, who pay commissions for the increased traffic generated. The model is similar to that of American Slickdeals, bought by Goldman Sachs in 2018, which has more than 60 million hits per month. In 2020, Promobit had a net revenue of R$5.2 million and handled R$160 million, up 40% between 2018 and 2020.

For Méliuz, the acquisition is an opportunity to enter this social commerce market and cross-sell products between platforms. According to Salmen, the overlap of users of the two companies is not significant. The bonus is that the cashback promotions offered by Méliuz can now be posted by users in the Promobit community, which was previously banned by the startup.

This is the third acquisition that Méliuz has announced since its IPO in November. Last week, the company announced the purchase of fintech Acesso and, before that, acquired control of the coupon platform Picodi.com for R$120 million, which comprises 12,000 stores and operates in 44 countries.

New businesses are expected to be announced in the coming months – according to Salmen, the company is analyzing some 30 other companies in search of good entrepreneurs to develop new technology products.

Source: Exame