OLX Brazil Acquires Digital Lead Management and Contract Specialist Sohtec

OLX Brazil has announced that it has acquired Sohtec, a startup specializing in optimizing lead management and improving the distribution of digital contracts from renters and buyers to real estate companies.

Founded in 2017 in the southern city of Porto Alegre, Sohtec registers and distributes leads while digitizing processes around request visits, offers and document management. The company, which counts the likes of Re/Max among its clients, is present throughout Brazil and employs a team of 8 (according to Linkedin).

In quotes posted to Linkedin, OLX Brazil, CEO Andries Oudshoorn remarked that the acquisition of Sohtec is just the start of his company's digital real estate transformation:

"This is the first of several acquisitions to make real estate processes more digital. With Sohtec's technology, we will be able, in the future, to offer via our transactional location solution, ZAPway+, the option of closing a contract 100% over the internet. In this way, we have strengthened our presence in the market by expanding the offer of products and services with the ZAP+ solutions, acquired by OLX Brasil just over a year ago."

Andries Oudshoorn will be a guest speaker at the upcoming Global Online Marketplaces Summit in Miami in June.

OLX Brazil is the joint venture between Adevinta and Prosus. The company operates leading real estate verticals ZAP and Viva Real as well as the popular generalist classifieds site OLX.com.br. The company's main competitor in the market is the Sao Paulo-based unicorn and digital rentals specialist Quinto Andar.

This week's news that OLX Brazil has acquired a company that specialises in digital contracts can be seen as a direct response to the threat posed by Quinto Andar which itself has put money into expansion through M&A recently with December's purchase of Navent's real estate assets.