Neoway, a Brazilian company that offers big data analytics and artificial intelligence for businesses, and local stock exchange market B3 are launching Smart, a relationship program with startups. The program’s goals are to find companies that can help Neoway expand its product offering.
According to Guilherme Mendonça, Neoways’ vice-president of strategic partnerships, two batches will be selected every year. The companies will receive mentoring, access to clients, and Google Cloud credits, in addition to access to Neoway’s tools and the offices in São Paulo and Florianópolis.
As a plus, the partnership can strengthen the possibility of an investment or acquisition by Neoway, B3, or its corporate venture capital fund, L4 Venture Builder. “For a CVC, the best model is to do business with someone close to you,” says Pedro Meduna, L4’s co-founder. According to him, the idea is to make at least one investment in a company that participates in the first two batches of the program.
Created by partnerships
Smart was created based on a partnership project that Neoway has been operating for two or three years. Even though it was not so structured, the initiative generated good results. Four products were created with startups such as Botmaker, Agrotools, and Combat Fraud (CAF). “With CAF alone, we have already generated tens of millions in sales. We almost doubled the company’s revenue”, says Mendonça. According to him, after B3 acquired Neoway, many of these agreements were also expanded to their umbrella, increasing the scope of the offers.
With the new innitiative, which is part of Neoway‘s broader partenership strategy, the plan is to have three to five companies in each edition. “Since this is the first edition, we don’t know what is the exact number. But we don’t want to select many companies so we can be close to each one”, says Mendonça.
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The focus is on companies that have already validated their product and have a customer base. For the 1st class, segments like fraud, risk and compliance, autos and consortium, and sales and marketing, which are strategic for Neoway and B3, will have preference. In the future, areas such as credit, jurimetrics, energy, and carbon may be included.
According to Mendonça, the plan is not to act as an accelerator or an incubator, but as a business “enhancer”, taking advantage of what Neoway and B3 can offer in terms of structure and market presence.
The term “enhancer” may seem familiar to those who work in the fintech world, very similar to Boostlab, Brazilian bank BTG’s startup program. And this is no coincidence. The program was also developed and will be operated by ACE Startups.
Applications for startups that want to participate in Smart are open and filled in until October 25 at www.smartpotencializadora.com.br.
(translation by Gabriela Del Carmen)
