Ali, a Brazilian fintech that provides payroll loans, announced it received a $25 million investment led by BTG Pactual bank.
The Series A round is led by BoostLAB — a business hub of the investment bank BTG Pactual. The funds will be used to expand the company’s product, commercial, technology, and HR and to create new projects by the end of the year.
This investment also arrives as great support for the expansion and growth of Ali, which is at a critical moment, spending the last few years mainly building its technology to make it easier for clients to save money on their credit operations despite Brazil’s currently high-interest rates.
The company expects to reach one million clients by 2023.
New funding for Ali’s operations
Ali was founded by Bruno Reis in 2018 and currently operates in private consigned credit and solar financing credit, transacting more than $38 million in consigned credit operations since its conception.
“We are very thrilled with the success of this investment round, with the long-term support of important market leaders with great synergy with our business, which further reinforces the adherence of our value proposition with companies and employees,” said Reis, CEO, and founder of Ali, in a public statement. “Now, we will have even more capillarity and the ability to accelerate our growth to bring our solution of salary increase through Ali’s debt reduction to as many people as possible.”
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In the same round, investment manager CDP Capital expanded its support for Ali and announced that it would also secure funding for the company’s $19 million operation.
Payroll loans
Ali offers payroll loans to the employees of its partner companies, focused on debt reduction, through an app that automatically collects all the credit lines taken by the user and the costs of these lines. Subsequently, Ali clears the arrears and passes the collection to the user with a lower interest rate.
This is a proposal that, in many cases, attracts more Brazilian users than just the credit line. The renegotiated installment is discounted directly from the user’s payroll when hiring the service.
According to the company, in the first quarter of 2022, the segment reached $4.9 billion in private consigned stock in Brazil and still has a fortunate space to attract more customers.
But this is not the only market in which Ali wants to be a leader. In addition to the financial credit product, the fintech provides a line of financing for solar power generators — which can be contracted by anyone directly with the startup.
Approaching the energy sector
In the solar energy sector, Ali works in partnership with Ecori — a solar generation market distributor that offers financing solutions for its customers and business partners. The company claims that this credit operation results in savings in electricity expenses for residential consumers, with the savings itself being used to repay the credit.
Four years after its foundation and with about 260,000 clients, the company plans to expand its operations throughout Brazil. Currently, the fintech serves companies such as Deloitte, Ernst & Young, and Três Corações.
In January last year, the Brazilian fintech received a R$1 million seed investment from GR8 Ventures. The startup’s primary business at the time was offering payroll-deducted loans to federal government employees — which quickly escalated its growth.