Startup Failures in Brazil

Brazil's SaaS acquisition rollup that discovered the hard way that buy-and-integrate is harder than buy-and-pray

Fourteen years and $80M couldn't turn mobile top-ups into a viable super-app.

Brazilian P2P lending fintech connecting retail investors with SME borrowers in Minas Gerais shut down in 2023 as the Selic rate at 13.75% made P2P lending structurally uncompetitive against fixed income.

Brazil's COVID telehealth darling that couldn't survive the return to normal.

Brazil's affordable primary care unicorn built 57 clinics serving the underinsured — then collapsed under its own expansion debt.

Brazil's digital freight brokerage platform IPO'd at R$8B and crashed as truck freight volumes normalized

Brazil's LatAm payments unicorn gutted by US sanctions risk and mass layoffs after a $3B peak valuation

Brazil's carbon marketplace dream collapsed when its own forest projects faked the data.

Parametric insurance built on four years of data—eaten alive by a century-scale drought.

Brazil's mental health subscription startup undercut by the regulator it needed to win.

Brazil's marketplace connector unicorn collapsed after over-diversifying into fintech, logistics, and payments simultaneously

Brazil's tech-native health insurance startup raised $28M to fix the broken private health system — and shut down in July 2023 when unit economics proved unforgiving.

São Paulo fintech offering green credit lines to Brazilian SMEs raised R$60M before shutting down in 2023 as SME default rates hit 15%+ and the Selic rate made their cost of capital unprofitable.

The Brazilian corporate wellness unicorn that laid off half its team as post-COVID gym attendance made the model unworkable

Brazilian digital health plan startup raised $133M from SoftBank and Ribbit Capital to replace the employer health plan—then cut 60% of its workforce in 2023 as health insurance economics defied its tech-first assumptions.

Brazil's largest retail empire hid R$20 billion off-balance-sheet until a CEO discovered it on day 10

Brazil's first gig economy marketplace IPO'd on B3 at R$600M. Then Workana, Fiverr and Getwork destroyed it.

Brazil's largest crypto exchange gutted by the global crypto winter and FTX contagion

The Brazilian e-commerce platform that IPO'd at 3.5B in 2021 and traded at 90% below IPO by 2023 as post-ZIRP multiples collapsed.

The SME lending dream crushed by Brazil's interest rate spike.

Brazil's car subscription platform for gig drivers stalled when rising vehicle costs and insurance claims eroded every unit of margin

Latin America's English-learning giant sold for cents on the dollar after burning $120M.

Brazil's scholarship superstore hollowed out by a government policy reversal.

Brazil's clinic management SaaS that expanded into 15 states and burned to the ground.

Brazil's Portuguese voice AI champion couldn't survive currency depreciation and platform giants.

Environmental satellite tech killed by the government it was built to serve.

Brazil's iBuyer unicorn that hit $2.9B at the peak — and laid off 60% of staff as interest rates killed the residential market

Brazil's healthy frozen-food startup that burned through capital faster than its customers could eat

Brazil's hospital management SaaS that scaled fast and collapsed faster when its backer walked away.

SoftBank's Brazilian logistics unicorn shrank faster than it scaled after the easy-money era ended

Brazil's most-funded fintech cut 1,300 jobs (46% of staff) in 2022 as its asset-backed lending empire unraveled.

São Paulo startup that digitised the city's street parking voucher system, raised $30M, and built a 1M+ user base — lost its core business when the City of São Paulo awarded the parking concession renewal to a competitor.

Corporate wellness that couldn't pivot fast enough when offices went dark.

Brazilian parking payment app. 1M users. City-controlled competition ended it.

Brazilian social commerce startup raised $53M from a16z to replicate Pinduoduo in LatAm—then shut down when group buying did not translate to Brazilian consumer behaviour.

Brazil's SaaS for SMB merchants on marketplaces raised $200M from SoftBank and Tiger Global—then laid off 800 employees in 2022 when the marketplace commerce boom normalised.

Brazil's largest digital wallet. 67M users. Pix arrived and changed everything.

Brazilian quick commerce startup promising 10-minute delivery of grocery staples — collapsed in 2022 as part of the global q-commerce wave that proved ultrafast grocery delivery economics were unsustainable at startup scale.

Brazil's truck strike gave them their best pitch ever; inflation killed their customers' budgets.

Prosus bet $500M on LatAm used cars — and retreated in 7 months

Brazil's neobank for the unbanked. Pix killed the transaction revenue. Restructured.

Brazil's most valued proptech. Rate rises. 300 layoffs. Valuation down 60%.

Brazil's Pinduoduo — $80M from Tiger Global and SoftBank to prove social group-buying could work in the Amazon era — shut down in 2022 when the subsidies ran dry.

Brazil's e-commerce platform unicorn that went public at $3.5B and saw 85% of that value evaporate

Brazil's SoftBank-backed furniture e-commerce unicorn laid off hundreds and abandoned its logistics infrastructure as the post-COVID furniture demand cliff arrived.

Brazil's original bitcoin exchange. FTX and Binance arrived. Foxbit couldn't compete.

Brazilian proptech unicorn. Real estate downturn. 150 layoffs in 2022.

Brazil's secured lending unicorn. Rate rises broke the model. 600 layoffs.

Brazilian cross-border payments unicorn. Rate rises. 30% layoff.

Brazilian SME marketplace unicorn. Post-COVID ecommerce normalization. 350 layoffs.

Brazil's P2P SMB lender undone by pandemic defaults and regulatory headwinds

Brazil's best payments infrastructure startup, swallowed by Stone and stripped of its startup DNA.

Brazil's medical booking app outmaneuvered by global incumbents with deeper pockets.

Brazilian crowdshipping startup that built a last-mile network of neighbourhood pickup points — could not make the unit economics close at the density required to sustain operations.

Built a digital transformation map for clients who couldn't afford transformation.

Brazilian convenience delivery app acquired by Burger King Brazil for $7M in 2020 — and shut down in 2021 when the parent company refocused on its core restaurant business.

Brazil's personal finance app with 6M users, sold for scraps to PicPay after Nubank made it irrelevant.

Brazil's mobile tech conglomerate. iFood spun out. What remained was unclear.

DiDi's food delivery arm entered Brazil, spent two years subsidizing orders, and quietly exited — defeated by iFood

Brazil's first receivables marketplace, shut down by CVM regulation before it could scale.

Latin America's largest micromobility company lasted one year

Brazil's scooter and bike unicorn merged and vanished in two years

Brazilian same-day delivery. iFood and Rappi arrived with billions. Rapiddo didn't.

Brazil's leading SME accounting SaaS. Acquired by Visma. Trajectory ended.

Brazilian sports streaming startup. COVID cancelled every game. Shut down.

Certified refurbished phones in Brazil: great idea, wrong margins

Brazil's first NYSE-listed tech company raised $186M at $484M valuation. Amazon Brazil and Mercado Livre destroyed margins. Acquired by Magazine Luiza for $30M — 94% below IPO price — in 2019.

Brazil's challenger bank was killed by its own banking partner's capital failure.

Brazil's Groupon raised $30M from Rocket Internet and Naspers. When the daily deals market globally collapsed, so did Peixe Urbano.

Brazil's Zynga — until Zynga sued them for being too similar

Brazilian used car marketplace raised 30 million reais to simplify peer-to-peer car sales before Kavak entered Brazil with a billion-dollar war chest and made the local competitor economics structurally unviable.

Brazilian P2P lending platform for SMEs that could not survive default rates and regulatory friction.

Brazilian credit startup for gig workers that burned through capital serving the unbanked.

Brazil's first personal loan marketplace — outlasted by neobank all-in-ones

The Grin-Yellow scooter merger raised $160M and then collapsed when COVID wiped out micro-mobility demand across all 15 cities simultaneously.

Brazilian investment aggregator that failed to reach sustainable unit economics as the retail investing boom reversed.

Brazilian online education unicorn backed by General Atlantic that grew to millions of students during COVID and entered zombie mode when demand normalized.

Brazil's pioneer payment gateway destroyed by Wirecard fraud

On-demand beauty services platform that was blindsided by COVID-19.

Brazilian flight metasearch that survived nine years and Google Flights before COVID removed all air travel demand.

Brazilian digital real estate brokerage raised 40 million reais to cut commissions and speed transactions but Brazils historic interest rate spike in 2022 destroyed its entire addressable market.

Brazilian corporate taxi app squeezed out by Uber for Business and COVID-driven remote work.

Brazilian digital bank that raised $730M and was squeezed out by Nubank and Itau digital transformation.

Brazilian B2B credit analytics API displaced by Serasa Experian's fintech push

Brazilian DTC fashion startup that raised $55M and built 10 physical stores before filing for bankruptcy in 2023.

Brazilian BNPL startup crowded out by Nubank and Mercado Pago's identical features

Latin America's top carpooling app was swallowed by BlaBlaCar then shut down within months.

Brazilian enterprise AI platform spread too thin across verticals and burned through capital without focus

Brazil's leading music streaming app was acquired by Deezer for $7M then quietly shut down as Spotify took the market.

REBEL built Brazil first credit marketplace for educated young adults, raised 25 million dollars, and slowly wound down operations between 2022 and 2023 as rising interest rates destroyed the economics of personal lending to an already-indebted Brazilian middle class.

The Brazilian rental unicorn valued at 5.1 billion dollars that cut 450 jobs and shelved its IPO plans

PayPal-acquired European mPOS exited Brazil after losing to local champions

Brazil's innovative "mystery deals" travel OTA raised $75M from Tiger Global then collapsed into class-action lawsuits and debt after selling packages it couldn't deliver.

Brazilian student content sharing platform with 10M users was acquired by Kroton, absorbed into Cogna, and quietly wound down.

UK bank-to-bank payments company found Brazil's PIX made its model redundant

Brazilian digital canteen startup that could not compete with iFood and Rappi on unit economics.

Brazilian AI financial coach that pioneered personal finance automation and failed to monetize.

Brazilian insurtech raised 35 million dollars to reinvent car and phone insurance with a peer-to-peer model but regulatory constraints made the core proposition impossible to execute at scale.

German P2P lending exported to Brazil — headquarters pulled the plug when strategy changed

Brazilian digital bank for MEI microentrepreneurs shut down after failing to reach profitable scale in a crowded market.

Brazilian loyalty and cashback platform that raised $20M but couldn't sustain the economics of rewarding consumers at scale.

Tiger Global-backed Brazilian ecommerce startup raised $23M and shut down unable to compete with Mercado Livre and Magazine Luiza.

Enjoei IPO-ed on the B3 exchange in 2020, raising 1.1 billion reais on the promise of building Brazil leading second-hand fashion marketplace — and watched its stock fall 93 percent by 2023 as Shopee, Vinted, and Mercado Livre ate its market from all sides.

Brazil's embedded finance startup outgunned by Nubank's SME expansion

Home services marketplace that could not find sustainable unit economics in Brazil.

Online grocery startup that could not survive Brazil's post-COVID logistics economics.

Auto-secured lending arm of Brazilian unicorn shuttered by rates

Brazil's design-forward furniture marketplace raised $25M but could not overcome the brutal logistics of delivering large items across a continent.

Quero Educacao built Brazil largest marketplace for private university enrollment with millions of students — and sold to a competitor for less than it had raised after the post-COVID edtech correction.

Brazilian health insurance startup raised $21M and shut down after the economics of managed care never worked at its scale.

Brazilian q-commerce startup raised 110 million dollars to deliver groceries in 15 minutes but burned through its capital before the quick delivery category could become economically viable in Latin America.

Healthy ready-meal startup that burned through $26M chasing unprofitable growth.

Brazilian robo-advisor crushed by Brazil's dramatic interest rate hikes that made passive investing uncompetitive.

Brazil's largest wine e-commerce raised $40M from Ambev's venture arm then sold at a distressed valuation as logistics costs proved insurmountable.

Coding bootcamp pioneer that could not survive the post-COVID edtech bust in Brazil.