Valid, a Brazilian multinational offering secure technological solutions (B³: VLID3 – ON) announces the acquisition of 51.8% of Agrotopus, a startup focused on corporate solutions for the agribusiness industry. With this transaction, Valid now has added agritech as a new line of business, specializing in innovative solutions for the entire production chain for agriculture. The acquisition is valued at R$ 6.5 million.
Agrotopus’ client base includes coffee cooperatives, representing 12% of the Brazilian market. The focus, in the beginning, will be to consolidate solutions related to secure tracking and certifications for the origin and the entire production line, which are required by the coffee industry both for the domestic market and for export. The projection is that the company will account for 4% of Valid’s total revenue within four years.
The new agro line will launch with three services: the “digital farm” – with Internet of Things (IoT) solutions for coffee producers and cooperatives; the “smart warehouse” – online tracking of the movement of products and batches within the warehouse via RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags; and “marketplace” – a secure platform for the sale of supplies or consumption among producers, cooperatives and other players.
The solutions were developed keeping in mind the difficulties around the lack of full connectivity in remote areas. The combination of local processing and subsequent data transfer makes the solution accessible to producers of any size.
“This acquisition is part of the company’s strategy to align our global experience with local, innovative, and segmented initiatives. In addition, we have the opportunity to offer our integrated solutions for digital signatures and certificates, the Internet of Things, Big Data, and Blockchain.
Agrotopus is aligned with our vision for the development of business models for tracking, and this enables us to get into a segment of Brazil’s economy with an enormous growth potential and has been leading the adoption of IoT technology,” stated Carlos Affonso d’Albuquerque, Valid CEO.
This acquisition opens up yet another avenue for growth for the multinational, which operates in several countries, offering a diverse portfolio of secure services for the markets of finance and banking, mobile telephony, identification of persons, objects and transactions, data management, IoT, and Track & Trace.
