Brazil's Olist prepares for IPO after raising $23 million

Existing backer Redpoint Events, which first invested in Olist in 2015, also participated in the latest round, which brings Olist’s total funding to more than $126 million since its founding in 2015. According to Bloomberg, this round is the company’s last before it plans to go public.

SoftBank led Olist’s first round of Series D funding in November and completed the company’s $46 million Series C round in 2019.

Olist connects small businesses to larger product markets to help entrepreneurs sell their products to a larger customer base. The company was founded with the mission of helping small merchants gain market share nationwide through a SaaS licensing model for small brick-and-mortar businesses.

As of October 2019, Olist has over 7,000 customers and uses a dropshipping model to send products directly from stores to customers across the country, allowing them to grow on a capital-light model.

Olist said its platform provides tools to support “all phases of e-commerce operations” with the goal of helping merchants see a rapid increase in sales. Currently, there are about 25,000 merchants on its platform.

Latin America, in general, is where e-commerce adoption is increasing. The region’s $85 billion e-commerce market is growing rapidly and is expected to reach $116.2 billion by 2023.

To back that up, Orlistat said its revenue tripled to a record in the first quarter of 2021 compared with the same period last year, though it didn't provide exact figures . It also reportedly doubled its revenue in 2020, according to Bloomberg.

The company’s flagship product, Olist Store, provides merchants with a way to manage product listings , logistics and payments in stores. It also offers a “unique selling experience” through channels such as Mercado Livre , B2W and Via Varejo. The company said the product achieved record GMV in the first half of the year, up 2.5 times from the same period last year.

Last year, Olist launched a new product, Olist Shops, which enables users to create a virtual showcase in less than 3 minutes, which also provides payment checkout tools and integration with logistics operators.

Shops, which has an interface in Portuguese, English and Spanish, has attracted more than 200,000 users in 180 countries since its launch, according to Olist.

The company plans to use its new funds to invest in technology and products, make new acquisitions and boost its internationalization efforts. This builds on the two acquisitions that Olist made last year (Clickspace and Pax Logistica), which allowed Olist to enter the heated logistics space with more than 4,000 registered drivers.

Brazil

Olist

IPO