Elo7, the first and largest marketplace for buying and selling handicraft products in Brazil, today announced it has raised capital from Insight Venture Partners, a private equity and venture capital firm focused on investing in the global software, e-commerce, and Internet industries. The new capital will be used to accelerate marketing initiatives, invest more in building the technology platform, recruit industry expertise and strength Elo7's community of artisans. Insight Venture Partners is an existing investor in companies, like Twitter, Tumblr, Privalia and Groupalia.
In September 2011, Elo7 received a first round of capital from Monashees Capital a premium investor in Brazilian venture capital, and Accel Partners, one of the most recognized investment firms in Silicon Valley.
"Our first investment enabled us to build and develop key areas of Elo7, as well as confirm the potential of the business through achieving year-over-year growth of 100% in 2011," said Carlos Curioni, Chief Executive Officer at Elo7. "Insight´s investment represents a new phase for the Company to consolidate its online leadership in the sale of craft products".
"Insight believes that Elo7 will continue its rapid growth through adding new handicraft vendors, which will, in turn, attract more buyers", said Jeff Lieberman, Managing Director at Insight Venture Partners. "Brazilian's produce innovative and high quality handicrafts and Elo7 represents the best marketplace for artisans to showcase their products, and for buyers to find what they want. Insight looks forward to working with management to help them consolidate and strengthen their market-leading position."
About Elo7
Founded in 2008, by entrepreneurs Julian and Monica Ipolito, Elo7 is a handcraft marketplace that aims to foster trade handicraft products on-line, providing and easy and safe platform, for both the buyer and the seller. Currently, the site has more than 75 thousand registered craftsmen with over 1.5 million products advertised to the world. The site has more than 40 million pageviews and 5 million visits per month.
About Insight Venture Partners
Insight Venture Partners is a leading private equity and venture capital firm focused on the global software, e-commerce, Internet and data-services industries. Founded in 1995, Insight has raised more than $5 billion and made more than 150 investments. Insight has a successful two-team structure: each year the firm's investment team evaluates thousands of companies globally; while the Insight Onsite team of operations and strategy experts works with growth-stage management to provide resources and advice to enable them to achieve long-term success.
