Vortx buys 51% of the Basement; both companies are in the CVM sandbox

Vortx, an infrastructure fintech for capital markets, continues its expansion process after the Series B investment of R$ 190 million it received in 2021, and acquired 51% of Basement, a shareholding management platform. Both are in the sandbox of the Securities and Exchange Commission (CVM) and their projects can be integrated using blockchain. The companies did not disclose the value of the purchase.

But, they informed that a part of the investment was in the purchase of the participation of the 300 investors who bought Basement shares through crowdfunding. In addition, Basement maintains its brand, the founders remain in the business and the team will work independently, according to Juliano Cornacchia, co-founder and CEO of Vortx.

Basement is part of Kria, the first equity crowdfunding platform in Brazil, created in 2014. In the sandbox, while Vórtx created with QR Capital the Vórtx QR Tokenizadora, for tokenizing securities, Basement will be authorized to book securities for limited liability companies that have made or are in the process of making public offerings.

By being part of the CVM sandbox, “clients will be able, in the medium term, to connect via blockchain with hundreds of funds managed by Vórtx”, said Frederico Rizzo, CEO and co-founder of Basement. And he said it will be possible to unlock liquidity for companies that have people in their long-term incentive programs (ILPs), such as stock options (ILP), which is the area in which Basement.

According to Cornacchia, the two companies “share the same vision, to simplify the capital market. Basement enters the Vórtx ecosystem in a very complementary way to our solutions”. For Frederico Rizzo, CEO and co-founder of Basement., “it was mainly the shared conviction that there will be a more liquid and efficient market for unlisted companies that sparked our interest in joining forces with Vórtx”.

After receiving a contribution from the US private equity fund FTV Capital, Vórtx also purchased, in 2021, Simplific Pavarini, one of the most traditional trustees in Brazil, with around R＄ 200 billion in corporate debt custody. In addition, it invested in Investtools, which develops technology for investment managers, in Parfin, an infrastructure platform for investing in crypto assets, and in Preparo, a hiring and recruitment startup. Before that, in 2019, Vórtx had already acquired control of Vosasys BCInf

“The purchase is strategic and reinforces Vórtx’s financial services arm, bringing people and systems to areas such as bookkeeping of all types of assets, linked to Vórtx operations or not, escrow account and with Basement’s ILPs product”, said Cornacchia.

Basement came about after the partners realized how difficult it was for equity crowdfunding platform startups to manage the partners’ holdings, when there were many. This is because there are changes when there are, for example, new captures. Now, it expects to grow with the injection of capital and integration into the Vórtx ecosystem.

What also benefits the startup is the recent regulatory change for Brazilian corporations, which requires corporate books to be digital. Thus, the law created a market of more than BRL 1 billion in bookkeeping for privately-held companies and Basement created a product focused on the digital management of corporate books, registration of board minutes and control of mandates.