Monday, October 26, 2020
Source: Startupi
Configr, which specializes in offering cloud infrastructure management through software that automatically configures the operation, has received an investment of R$4 million. The investment round was conducted by Invest Tech and accompanied by KPTL, GVAngels, and Garan Ventures.
Created in 2013 in Brasilia by Arthur Furlan and Felipe Tomaz, Configr has revolutionized the cloud hosting segment. Small and medium-sized enterprises are its main customers, who can manage their operation in the cloud without the need to hire IT professionals specialized in infrastructure.
The company has developed a system for automating the configuration and management of cloud environments. Its robots automatically perform all the technical demands required to contract, install, configure, manage, and monitor more than 60 different types of major applications.
Its value proposition consists in offering the same benefit of a cloud server managed by teams of IT professionals, but at a price and technical demand compatible with the natural limitations of SMBs. Configr makes available in a matter of minutes a digital environment that a specialized team would take up to 18 hours to create. And it replaces the Managed Cloud, whose average investment starts at R$5 thousand.
Arthur says he has noticed a limitation on the part of many SMBs to run online businesses. “Companies needed to have either a lot of technical knowledge about infrastructure or a lot of investment capacity to hire a specific IT team that had it. If a company doesn’t have this knowledge in-house and neither the investment capacity, today it has a series of problems and is limited to the outdated technologies of shared hosting, which generate a series of problems and losses for these companies,” he explains.
In the last two years, by betting on a new model, Configr has grown about 12 times, reaching hundreds of partners, and the new system already represents almost 60% of the company’s sales. Without revealing details, the entrepreneur says that they will follow this method in parallel in the long term in their expansion project. Despite not participating in this round, Cedro Capital was the first fund to invest in the company.
According to Arthur Furlan, Configr’s CEO, the investment will be used for product evolution and commercial growth, seeking to expand the customer base. And also to, within 12 months, triple the team, which today has 21 collaborators.
“This is our second investment in the cloud segment, the first was in Sky.One in 2018, which continues to show high growth. Configr allows smaller businesses to migrate to the cloud in a simple way, and we believe that their growth will be accelerated with the channel strategy, which is being implemented with this contribution”, emphasizes Mauricio Lima, CEO of Invest Tech, who is leading this round.
For Renato Ramalho, CEO of KPTL, Configr has very consistent results in recent years and it is clear the competence and dominance within a specific segment. “It is a company with characteristics that KPTL identifies with. It has anticipated trends and innovated since its creation, has a solid team, and is very strong in intellectual property. It is easy to see this in the company’s good performance,” believes Ramalho.
Already well established, Configr’s product is an application dashboard that automates all the demands that a specialized technical team would perform. However, the processes are performed automatically by robots, resulting in much higher technical quality without the need for large investments in training, staff, or specialized consulting. At a price that SMBs can afford.
Rafael Moraes, founder of Garan Ventures, says he met Configr in 2014, even before its acceleration in Rio de Janeiro. “Since then, we have followed the company’s development with the expectation of participating in its shareholder structure. The opportunity came now, in a special moment for the sector: the market validated the cloud computing with the IPO of Locaweb, while in the USA, Digital Ocean, an important benchmark, became a unicorn. Configr will be a protagonist in the new generation of companies in the sector”, believes Moraes.
Tiago Franco, leader of the investment by GVAngels, highlights that, besides the financial return, the goal is to foster entrepreneurship. “Investing in Configr makes it possible both to support this team of stars and to support a number of other entrepreneurs who are emerging in the country and need a friendly, quality cloud solution. It is the second startup in the area that we invested in,” says Franco.
