Conta Simples secures another $41.5 million for its expense management approach in Brazil

Conta Simples, a Brazilian expense management and corporate card company, has raised $41.5 million (or more than R$200 million) in Series B funding.

The round was led by Base10 Partners, with participation from 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 joins Conta’s board of directors.

Ahead of the new funding, CEO Rodrigo Tognini and Chief Financial Officer Taeli Klaumann told TechCrunch that 2023 is Conta Simples’ “best year yet.” The company broke even at the end of the year and received a direct credit union operating license from the Central Bank of Brazil. This means financial services companies can do more with credit, digital accounts and payments.

Tognini said that to date, Conta Simples has 30,000 active users and has issued 500,000 physical and digital corporate credit cards with a total payment volume of 18 billion reais (about $3 trillion).

“Our revenue has nearly tripled in the past year,” Tonini added. “We also went from negative margins to a break-even point, which I think is one of the main reasons why our current investors were interested in doing this Series B round.”

At the same time, its expense control technology provides streamlined processes and customized monitoring. In 2022, the company acquired online advertising startup Hackr Ads after completing a 121 million reais Series A round of financing (equivalent to $24.8 million today). This enables Hackr Ads’ clients to use Conta and allows Conta to provide its clients with a way to manage ad campaigns.

The company expects to use the new funds in a variety of ways. The first is to grow the team. Tognini expects to open and fill approximately 100 new positions in 2024. Another is moving upstream to handle larger customers. Many of Conta’s initial customers are small businesses. That won’t change; however, Klauman said the company is now able to add and develop more features and products and sell to small and medium-sized businesses.

“Some of the big companies, not just in Brazil but in all countries, are not well served by expense management, so there’s huge potential there,” Klauman said. “The idea is to use this money in the next three, four or five years. We understand that the Brazilian Central Bank is trying to create these disruptive ideas. Our plan is to stay in close contact with them and not only create immediate purchases, pay later and other products to ensure we will support businesses of all sizes.”