By Aluisio Alves
SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazil’s food delivery app iFood will focus on growing its grocery delivery and financial services rather than becoming profitable, the company’s president and founder Fabricio Bloisi said.
“Our marketplace and fintechs businesses will still grow for five to seven years,” Bloisi told Reuters. “If you pursue profitability too fast, it can kill the business.”
Created in 2011, the company is now Brazil’s largest food delivery app. It has maintained double-digit growth, while other startups have laid off thousands of workers due to higher interest rates and inflation reducing consumer spending on delivery services.
Earlier this year, Uber Eats ended its delivery service in Brazil. Now, Rappi is the main competitor in the country.
IFood has maintained its expansion supported in part by supermarket deliveries and fintech businesses. Starting about a year ago, iFood began offering digital accounts and loans to clients.
IFood had revenues of more than 2.5 billion reais ($484.7 million) in the first half of 2022, up 28% year-on-year, according to data from Just Eat Takeaway, which recently sold its 33% stake in iFood to Prosus.
Serving a network of about 320,000 restaurants in the country, iFood now aims to increase its base of 30,000 supermarkets. It also recently added delivery for pharmacies and liquor stores.
According to Bloisi, by operating a service with strong customer recurrence, the company also has more opportunities to increase profits.
“Our customers buy on average twice a week, while in e-commerce this is much less frequent,” he said.
Bloisi said that in addition to investments in organic expansion, iFood may also make acquisitions.
“It is a very good chance,” he said, without specifying any targets.
($1 = 5.1574 reais)
(Reporting by Aluisio Alves; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
