Conta Simples grabs another $41.5M for its expense management approach in Brazil

Conta Simples, an expense management and corporate card company in Brazil, raised a Series B round of $41.5 million, or more than R$200 million.

Base10 Partners led the round and was joined by Conta’s Series A investors, including Valor Capital, Jam Fund, Y Combinator, Big Bets, Broadhaven and DOMO. As part of the investment, Base10 managing partner TJ Nahigian joined Conta’s board.

The new funding comes as company executives Rodrigo Tognini, CEO, and Taeli Klaumann, CFO, tell TechCrunch that 2023 was the “best year” for Conta Simples. It ended the year reaching breakeven and obtained a license from the Brazilian Central Bank to operate as a Direct Credit Society. This means the financial services company can do more with credit, digital accounts and payments.

To date, Conta Simples has 30,000 active users and has issued 500,000 physical and digital corporate credit cards for a total payment volume of R$18 billion, or roughly $3 billion, Tognini said.

“Over the past year, we grew in terms of revenue, almost 3x year over year,” Tognini added. “We also went from a negative margin to breakeven, and I think was one of the main reasons that our current investors were interested in doing this Series B round.”

Meanwhile, its expense control technology provides a streamlined process and customized monitoring. In 2022, the company acquired online ads startup Hackr Ads following a R$121 million Series A ($24.8 million in today’s dollars). This gave Hackr Ads’ customers the ability to use Conta and for Conta to provide its customers with a way to manage advertising campaigns.

The company expects to use the new funding in a few ways. The first is to grow its team. Tognini expects to open and fill about 100 new roles in 2024. Another is moving upstream to handle bigger customers. Much of Conta’s initial clients are small businesses. That won’t change; however, the company is now in a position to increase and develop more features and products and sell to mid-level and small enterprises, Klaumann said.

“Some big companies, not only in Brazil, but all countries, are not well served with expense management, so there is a huge potential there,” Klaumann said. “The idea is to use this money in the next three, four or five years. We understand that the central bank in Brazil is trying to create these disruptive ideas. Our plan is to stay close to them and create not only buy now, pay later and other products to guarantee that we’re going to support all sizes of businesses.”