InfoCasas Partners with AoCubo in Brazil

The Brazilian iBrokerage firm AoCubo is to partner with prominent South American portal group InfoCasas with a view to tapping the group for its technology. In return, InfoCasas will enter into a Simple Agreement for Future Equity note (SAFE) to acquire 20% of AoCubo based on its current valuation of $8.15 million any time over the next three years. 

InfoCasas runs property portals in Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Peru, while the AoCubo model, which has been termed ‘iBrokerage’, seeks to generate, screen, and then algorithmically match leads with the best-suited agent from its large inventory.

AoCubo’s innovative business model has already attracted several big-name investors such as Online Marketplaces’ own Simon Baker as well as Brian Requarth and Frontier Digital Ventures (FDV) boss Shaun Di Gregorio who invested personally at the end of July. The new partnership with InfoCasas, a company in FDV’s portfolio of investments, can be seen as further validation of a business model that is looking to ‘Uberize’ real estate in Brazil and will potentially see an important injection of both capital and expertise for the young company lead by CEO Ronnie Sang.

Check out our interview with Ronnie which is part of our Vodcast series ‘Building Marketplaces in Challenging Times’.

While the deal gives AoCubo technology and expertise to expand its operations within Brazil, the deal may also give InfoCasas a foothold from which to launch a portal in the competitive Brazilian market. Commenting on the partnership, InfoCasas CEO Ricardo Frechou said:

“This partnership has created a low-risk opportunity for expansion into Brazil, a large and attractive market, as well as accelerate expansion into new markets. We are confident our technology can accelerate AoCubo’s growth and we look forward to working together in the future”.