Four Startups are Chosen by BuscaPe as Partners in The Program 'Sua Ideia Vale Um Milhao'

SAO PAULO, Aug. 4, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- On Monday night (August 1st), at an event held at its new headquarters in Sao Paulo, BuscaPe (www.buscape.com.br), Latin America's largest price comparison site, announced the companies chosen to become its partners as a result of the program "Sua Ideia Vale 1 Milhao [Your Idea Is Worth a Million]." The program analyzed candidate startups in the fields of "Social Commerce" and "Mobile Commerce."

After analyzing more than 800 projects involving 2,500 entrepreneurs, and arriving at 9 finalists, a jury made up of Romero Rodrigues, President of BuscaPe, Rodrigo Borges, Vice President for New Products, Guilherme Stocco and Ayrton Aguiar, both Vice Presidents for Business Development, chose not only one but four startups: Urbanizo, Meu Carrinho, HotMart and Anuncie La. Each of these startups will receive an initial investment of BRL 300,000 so they can hit the ground running and further structure their businesses. In doing this, BuscaPe is assuming a 30% share in each company, appraising each one at a post-money valuation of BRL$ 1 million.

"The great quantity and quality of projects presented us with an extremely difficult choice, so we decided to bring into Grupo BuscaPe not just one startup, as we had initially planned, but four. From the moment we assume a share of these companies, we have to support them so they can grow, become leaders of their segments and part of the BuscaPe platform. We created the program to expand our business more effectively, and the receptiveness of young entrepreneurs was so great that we decided to repeat the program in 2012," says Romero Rodrigues.

"When we stimulate the entrepreneurial spirit we are encouraging the appearance of new enterprises. It is an ecosystem.  We need to attract young people with entrepreneurial spirit so we can improve and keep growing the company at a rapid pace.  Here at BuscaPe, whenever we hire an employee we are also hiring an entrepreneur.  BuscaPe itself arose from young college students who wanted to improve the way people lived and shopped.  We are driven by people who are here to win, and that's why our group has to attract the absolute best among entrepreneurs. With that spirit we decided to look for a new partner. We ended up finding four," he adds.

The chosen startups were:

Urbanizo: a facilitator for buying and selling real state properties, this platform also tracks real estate pricing by region, and provides "price heat maps" for easier analysis and search.  The application is still a prototype, but when launched commercially, revenues will be generated from advertising, as well as the sale of premium versions for real estate brokers and investors.

Meu Carrinho: ["My Shopping Cart"] is an application mostly for mobile devices which allows shoppers to compare grocery prices among online and physical supermarkets. The application is equipped with a bar code scanner for performing real-time in-store search. There is currently an Android version but an iOS one is under development, and the app is already operating with a base of 70,000 bar codes for registered products, fed by a daily reading from online and physical supermarkets. Main revenue opportunities are based on advertising generated by clicking on ads and in the sale of featured positions in product searching.

HotMart:  a platform that provides all necessary infrastructure for the operation and distribution of digital content  by content producers. The company offers safe storage, control of access to content, payment processing and automatic delivery of content to end buyers. The site is already live, and revenue is generated by charging a fee for each transaction. It is also possible to subscribe to premium accounts, as well as additional and customized services.

Anuncie La: ["Advertise there"]  a social graph-based marketplace that makes it possible for buyers and sellers to access their counterpart's profiles, without intermediation. Strongly integrated with popular social networks such as Orkut, Facebook and Twitter, this product's proposition is to help connect sellers and buyers in a familiar setting, where transactions are safe and no commissions are charged. An initial version is already on the air and revenue will likely come from premium ads by sellers and from special platforms for professional and regular vendors.

About Grupo BuscaPe

Starting from product search and price comparison service at http://www.buscape.com.br in June 1999, Grupo BuscaPe has grown to be a group of leading properties focused on facilitating and supporting e-commerce in Latin-America. With more than 60 million visits every month and present in 28 countries, BuscaPe's services include price comparison, payments, lead generation and affiliate network, among others.

MORE INFORMATION FOR THE PRESS
FirstCom Comunicacao (www.firstcom.com.br)
Luis Claudio Allan ([email protected])
Rodrigo Capella ([email protected])
Marcelo Volpato ([email protected])
Aline Santana ([email protected])
Tel. (11) 3034-4662

SOURCE Buscape Informacao e Tecnologia Ltda