ArpexCapital

Brazil:

·         Brazilian mobile services company, Movile, has launched HTML5 Mobile Web App Social APIs.  These products are available on Zeewe, Movile’s mobile app store, and make it easy for web app developers to add leaderboards and social features to their mobile web apps. 

o   http://rww.to/l4eKBh

·         On July 7^th the first Campinas TECH Meetup will occur at Unicamp. The main angel investors in Brazil will be in attendance to discuss  the topic of investments. Based on submitted interests, entrepreneurs will be seated with angel investors in their sectors.

o   http://bit.ly/lXg3N0

·         Regrupe, a secondary group coupon market, and ApontaOfertas, a deal aggregator, are merging. The two companies believe that combining the daily deals secondary market with the primary market further evolves the group deals business.

o   http://bit.ly/mNTdSJ

·         Registration for the Idea to Product Latin America competition is now open and closes July 29^th.  Participants must be regularly enrolled in a Latin American university and have a unique idea/technology to develop.  The winner of the competition will compete in the finals in Sweden and will receive consulting services from FGVcenn.

o   http://bit.ly/lvC5T3

·         Telebras, a telecom company, has admitted to being open to partnering with other investors in order to carry out the National Broadband Plan (dispersion of fiber optic connections throughout the country) by 2014. Telebras is attempting to reach its goals with a reduced staff and limited capital, thereby prompting the need for outside partners.

o   http://bit.ly/l6y4LV

·         Startup Weekend Rio de Janeiro is June 24-June 26.  Key attendees are Dave McClure of 500 Startups, Yuri Gitahi of Aceleradora, and Gustavo Guida Reis of HelpSaude. A series of networking, speeches, and pitches  composes the event’s schedule.

o   http://bit.ly/k2Rhgn

United States:

·         Shazam, a mobile music app, raised $32MM in a round led by Kleiner Perkins. Shazam will use the funds to double its staff and accelerate product development as it works towards adding more television to its music offering. 

o   http://bit.ly/lCmRqC

·         Foursquare has officially made a partnership deal with American Express. American Express will offer discounts to cardholders when they check in on their mobile phone at certain shops and restaurants.

o   http://nyti.ms/ja5FbD

·         PopCap Games, a mobile gaming company, is expected to be bought by Electronic Arts, a traditional gaming company. The acquisition price is thought to be around $1B and motivated by EA’s desire to move into the new social and mobile gaming sectors.

o   http://tcrn.ch/kJu0Qb

·         Ringleadr has raised $500K in seed funding.  These funds will be used to build mobile apps and to forge partnerships. Ringleadr allows users to create their own group deals. Once a deal is created, shared, and pre-ordered, the local business has 15 days to approve, deny, or modify the deal according to their standards.

o   http://tcrn.ch/lUpdzp

·         Bromium raised $9.2MM in a series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz.  Bromium is a security platform company that focuses on cloud security. Bromium’s product should debut in the second half of 2011.

o   http://tcrn.ch/liINAW

·         Softbank Capital, SV Angel, and Peter Thiel have invested a combined $600K in BestVendor.  BestVendor aims to help SMBs make purchasing decisions through social recommendations, i.e. it is a Yelp for B2B.

o   http://tcrn.ch/jpiCxP

·         DealsGoRound, a secondary daily deals marketplace, has launched a free virtual wallet service. Using this, users can import, safely store, and manage their daily deal purchases across deal providers.

o   http://tcrn.ch/m7X1sd

·         Earbits, an online radio startup, raised $605K from Y Combinator and others.  Earbits is like Pandora, but from the musicians’ side, not the listener’s.  In July Earbits plans on taking bids from musicians in order to offer streaming time. These bids will supplant ads.

o   http://tcrn.ch/isigaA

VC/Industry:

·         The market for geo-location based tools ought to grow to $10.3B by 2015 (an increase of 368%) according to a report released by Pyramid Research.  The consistent and rising use of GPS equipment and smartphones is credited for the increase.

o   http://bit.ly/mdVyOR

·         According to Bytemobile, a network management and video optimization firm, mobile video accounts for 40% to 60% of total mobile data traffic. Furthermore, iPhone users use more video data traffic than Android and laptop users.

o   http://rww.to/jamr9j

·         True Ventures, an early-stage VC firm, is raising a $200MM third fund. Through its first two funds of $155MM (1^st) and $213MM (2^nd) True Ventures has invested in 74 tech startups.

o   http://bit.ly/mvI4yZ

I am Anthony Hurtado an American intern at ArpexCapital. Prior to joining ArpexCapital I lived in São Paulo, Brazil where I briefly studied at PUC-SP while interning at Raymond James & Associates.   Currently, I am a student at Georgetown University.  I will periodically contribute to this blog.

In the US and European ecosystem, a “mobile” revolution, driven by smartphones, is underway. It is unclear, however, whether the same mobile revolution will occur in Brazil: 82% of the Brazilian population uses pre-paid chips in place of mobile plans and Brazil is the second most expensive place for someone to use a cellphone, due to layers of taxes and fragmented industry fees.   If you were to look at the decision by Pontomobi, Brazil´s largest mobile marketing company, to bypass Mexico and Argentina and instead expand into Europe due to their more advanced tech infrastructure, you would probably conclude that Brazil’s current boom won’t include mobile.

Nevertheless, I have found many reasons to believe in an imminent Brazilian mobile revolution. The chief reason is the Brazilians themselves.  In the land where a new iPhone costs anywhere from 2.5-12X more than in the US, sales are up!  The new Class C in the last eight years has increased general consumption nearly seven times over.  Mobile phones and other tech products make up a significant portion of this new consumption.  App-heavy, Android-based phones are the country’s fastest growing cellphones. Despite having sky-high tariffs on smartphones, smartphone sales are up 85%! In the overtaxed mobile environment, 15% of Brazilians already have a smartphone.  By 2014 that number is expected to be 45%.

Moreover, while there is an endless amount of legislation and regulation of cellphone minutes, ubiquitous promotions by telecom carriers greatly minimize the actual costs incurred by many Brazilians.  These promotions already include the mobile Internet space as seen in, e.g., TIM’s latest promotion of a month’s free Internet when you buy a TIM pre-paid phone.

The question is not whether Brazil will experience the mobile movement but which Brazilian companies will do the best job of harnessing it.  With this in mind, Pontomobi´s Europe play now makes sense.  It is not that the company is abandoning Brazilian mobile marketing, rather they´re preparing for its next stage, which is currently being realized elsewhere.  Their move to the developed markets demonstrates that the Brazilians who progress Brazil´s mobile sector to its next stage may not be in Brazil right now. They will return to Brazil and the mobile revolution, when it hits Brazil, and will combine many European and American (and Asian) lessons with indigenous business and technological standards.   

It’s coming: the worldwide mobile revolution will soon hit Brazil, The Country of Tomorrow Today.