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Commerce Infra From LATAM
How One Brazilian Scaleup Is Building Commerce Infrastructure the World can’t Ignore
EVOLVE Commerce Club
July 20, 2025
Welcome to This Week’s dispatch
In this week’s edition:
The week ahead
Scaling Without A Flag & Why Relationships outperforms roadmaps
Community Round Up
In Partnership with
Braze is a customer engagement platform used by the world’s most loved brands from global retailers to fast-growing disruptors to build deeper, more meaningful relationships with their audiences. What makes Braze unique is its ability to combine real-time data, cross-channel messaging, and human creativity to deliver truly personalized experiences at scale. We believe commerce is evolving toward connection, not just conversion.
Braze shares this vision. Their technology empowers brands to engage customers with authenticity and intelligence values that mirror the ethos of our community.
Now onto this week’s newsletter
🗓️ The Week Ahead
Powering Sales & Marketing Decisions with Data Alan Rodrigues | Alan Rodrigues Lima Consulting Group What we will explore 🔹Bridge Marketing and Sales with Data 🔹Designing Customer Journeys that Convert 🔹Digital Transformation That Actually Delivers 🔹How to Make Martech Work Across Borders Regional differences in tech adoption and maturity (LATAM vs. Europe). When: 22/07 - 1 pm CET |
Commerce Infra From LATAM
There’s a moment in every digital transformation strategy deck where someone says:
“Let’s become a marketplace.”
The margins are better. The scale is exponential. The idea? Irresistible.
But building a marketplace isn't just a business decision it's an operational gauntlet.
This week, we sat down with Matheus Pedralli, CEO and co-founder of Omnik, one of Brazil’s fastest-growing marketplace enablers. They’re the tech and service partner behind marketplace rollouts for companies like Vivo, Motorola, CVC, Granado, Pic Pay,to name a few.
And as Matheus reminded us the marketplace boom in LATAM isn’t theory. It’s happening right now.
The Marketplace Moment in LATAM
While most global reports focus on the U.S. and China, LATAM is quietly building its own marketplace wave, and doing so under very different constraints.
Logistics challenges. Low trust in third-party sellers. Highly fragmented tax and regulatory environments. A shortage of middleware and ecosystem-ready tools.
And still Brazil is booming.
Banks are turning into marketplaces. Retailers are expanding their SKU universe. Telcos are productizing their customer base.
💡 “Everyone wants to be a marketplace. But very few want to manage the complexity,”
That’s where Omnik comes in not with templates or tech suites, but with a vertical integration model that starts with architecture and ends with adoption.
When we talk about global marketplaces, the spotlight tends to fall on the usual suspects Amazon, Alibaba, Shopee.
But in our latest expert session with Matheus Pedralli, Co-Founder & CEO of Omnik, we zoomed in on Latin America a region that's not only growing fast but also innovating under pressure.
From Service Provider to Ecosystem Builder
Most service companies sell solutions. Omnik sells ecosystem enablement. They’re not helping brands sell more, they’re helping brands sell beyond their own inventory by building full-stack B2B2C marketplaces.
And it’s working.
Why?
Because Omnik didn’t try to compete on buzzwords. They picked their niche marketplaces for enterprise brands and built credibility by solving real problems for real players.
They now operate in Brazil, Colombia, and Chile, and are starting to attract attention from partners in Europe. But, as Matheus noted, expanding internationally isn't about code. It's about local context.
The rules change. So must the approach.
Lessons From LATAM
What makes LATAM a compelling case study isn’t just its growth rates it’s the scrappiness and adaptability required to scale.
Omnik has succeeded because:
They knew trust is infrastructure in Brazil and built onboarding workflows that prioritized transparency.
They understood that banks and telcos have reach and designed marketplaces that complement their customer ecosystems.
They invested early in compliance, seller onboarding, and catalog governance all the invisible layers that separate failed experiments from revenue engines.
And most of all, they stayed close to the real work.
💡 “No one talks about the 500 spreadsheets that run behind the scenes,” Matheus said, half-joking. But it’s the truth.
That’s what Omnik handles. And it’s why they’re trusted.
LATAM is not one market. It’s 33.
Brazil is different from Mexico. Chile from Colombia. Yet most global strategies treat LATAM as one region. Matheus explained how Omnik’s early success came from deeply understanding operational differences in each country from taxation and logistics to platform rules.
This complexity is exactly why marketplaces have thrived in the region. Brands can't build DTC easily. So instead of fighting that reality, Omnik leaned in and built infrastructure that helps brands scale across dozens of platforms from Mercado Libre to Amazon LATAM and regional players like B2W and Via
Infrastructure gaps become business models.
If you live in Europe or the US, it’s easy to assume Shopify or Salesforce solves everything. In LATAM, tech is uneven. That’s what makes enablement players like Omnik essential. They offer the “pipes” brands need to sell across channels — integrating media, commerce, and fulfillment in one place.
As Matheus said,
“We’re not just technology. We operate. We’re partners in execution.” That operational layer working in-market, fixing errors in listings, dealing with last-mile quirks is the invisible moat that global entrants underestimate.
International expansion is not copy-paste.
Omnik recently opened offices in Spain and is piloting growth in the US. But the go-to-market isn’t just “translate the deck.” What Matheus learned is that LATAM experience builds resilience. It teaches you to deal with chaos and that’s now a competitive advantage abroad.
“Many companies in LATAM operate without VC.” They grow with discipline. It’s painful, but it prepares you,”
Omnik: the company built for the middle
What makes Omnik fascinating isn’t just its market it’s its philosophy.
Rather than building a better marketplace, Matheus chose to support the merchants, distributors, and brands that already operate in them.
“We are not the store. We are the bridge.”
Omnik connects inventory, catalog, pricing, fulfillment, and analytics across more than 50 channels.
It’s a company focused on execution infrastructure the kind of work most people underestimate until they can’t scale.
Why this matters?
Matheus is part of a new generation of Latin American founders who aren’t trying to clone Silicon Valley.
They’re building for the real structure of their markets, and in doing so, are becoming relevant in regions others often overlook.
You’ve probably heard the buzz around “building a marketplace.”
But as Matheus reminds us: most of what’s written about marketplaces comes from a U.S. or European perspective and often skips the hard parts.
In LATAM, the playbook is different. There are infrastructural gaps, payment challenges, and logistics bottlenecks.
Yet Omnik has thrived by doing what others don’t: building behind the scenes for some of LATAM’s largest companies. We're talking about Vivo, Motorola, Granado, CVC, to name a few .
What’s driving the growth?
According to Matheus, LATAM is going through a second wave of digital maturity. The first wave was led by B2C disruptors.
The second? Established players creating their own ecosystems. Banks are now launching marketplaces.
Retailers are transforming into digital malls. Brands are realizing that owning the customer interface is a strategic imperative not a nice-to-have .
doesn’t know you yet..
What Omnik’s Story Reminds Us
Matheus didn’t build Omnik by chasing the hype.
He built it by solving hard problems, in hard markets, with people who trusted him to deliver.
And that’s the real edge in global commerce today:
Not the size of your TAM but the depth of your relationships.
At EVOLVE, that’s exactly what we’re building:
A global peer group where senior professionals don’t just share contacts they share context.
Where Brazilian marketplace builders sit at the same table as European strategy leaders.
And where growth isn’t driven by cold outreach, but by warm introductions and earned trust.
If you’re navigating global expansion, building partnerships, or scaling something of your own you’ll feel right at home here.
If you're curious where this is all headed join us.
Until next week,
Carlos
Founder
EVOLVE Commerce Club
Evolve for Senior Commerce Professionals
What We’re Watching
🌍 Future of Work & Global Careers
1. A wave of stricter office mandates at major companies
Several global corporations—including Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, TikTok, Ford,and Goldman Sachs—are enforcing stricter return-to-office policies, reversing pandemic-era flexibility. Office attendance is increasingly required five days a week, as leaders claim in-person work boosts productivity and culture
Source: Business Insider
2. Starbucks tightens remote-work rules for leadership
Starbucks' CEO Brian Niccol now mandates four in-office days per week for corporate staff and requires “people leaders” to relocate to Seattle or Toronto within 12 months. Non-compliance results in an optional exit package. The move underscores the trend of re-centralizing leadership presence
Source: Financial Times
Commerce & International Partnerships
1. Walmart Connect expands globally
Walmart is extending its retail media arm, Walmart Connect, into multiple international markets. The initiative positions Walmart as a major media owner with retailer data and ad inventory becoming new revenue streams
Source:Nasdaq
2. Criteo + Mirakl Ads partnership empowers long-tail sellers
Criteo has integrated with Mirakl Ads to support mid-to-long-tail marketplace advertisers globally. This alliance aims to democratize retail media, enabling smaller vendors to scale in digital marketplaces
Source: Prnewswire
In Partnership with
Airmeet stands out by designing for connection in a sea of platforms chasing leads. It’s used by companies like Walmart, Accenture, and the University of Toronto, yet it works just as well for emerging communities like ours. We’ve trusted and partnered with Airmeet to run 60+ expert sessions. It’s reliable, intuitive, and built for human interaction, not just metrics.
If you host events where relationships matter more than registrations, Airmeet is worth a closer look
Some of our club members currently lead or have led world leading commerce organizations
Community Round Up
Evolve Expert Sessions
Expert Session #70 - Matheus Pedralli
In this expert session, Mateus Pedrali, CEO of OmniK, discusses the rapid growth of marketplaces in Brazil and Latin America, emphasising the shift from traditional retail to digital ecosystems. He highlights the importance of understanding consumer behaviour, the challenges retailers face in building their own marketplaces, and the opportunities that arise from expanding product offerings. The conversation also touches on the future of marketplaces as ecosystem platforms that provide not just products but also services and community engagement.
Featured Member - Renée Hartmann
Renee Hartmann - Top Retail Expert/ Strategic Advisor & EVOLVE Club Member
On Integrating Innovation in a Chaotic World
“The challenge isn’t innovation — it’s integrating it across the business while still fighting day-to-day fires.”
– Vincent Diallo, Investment Partner at Progression & Founder of Interlace Ventures
This quote from our latest Commerce Beyond Borders conversation with Vincent Diallo hit hard because it’s what we see daily.
Innovation isn’t lacking. AI pilots are running. Startups are pitching. Teams are experimenting.
But the bottleneck? Integration.
Too often, innovation is a slide in a strategy deck. A team off in a corner. A pilot that never scales.
Vincent, Chris Baker, and I explored this tension and what it means across geographies we’ve all worked in: China, Europe, and North America.
Here’s what stood out:
🧠 Agentic AI is already reshaping commerce — not just customer interfaces, but operations and supply chains. But without organizational readiness, most of it will remain surface-level.
🛠 Innovation cannot live in silos. Companies need cross-functional innovation literacy — not one “innovation team” disconnected from delivery.
📦 Autonomous logistics, spatial computing, decentralized commerce — these aren’t futuristic anymore. They’re already shaping how goods move, how customers interact, and how commerce flows.
🔄 Big companies are being asked to think like startups — iterate, test, move fast.
Most aren’t structurally built for that. And it shows.
Founders need to think infrastructure-first, not just app-first.
Operators need roadmaps that stretch from next quarter to five years out — or risk irrelevance.
This is the challenge — and the opportunity — facing all of us in global commerce.
– Renée Hartmann
Follow Renée on LinkedIN
👀 Have something worth sharing?
If you’re exploring the future of commerce, procurement, AI or just have a sharp perspective grounded in real experience—we’d like to hear from you.
Our members include senior advisors, operators, and decision-makers across 43+ markets. They come to EVOLVE not for noise, but for signal.
If you want your ideas to reach the right people, reply to this newsletter or message us directly.
We’ll guide you from there.
From the Community
Events from our partners
Forum Ecommerce Brasil
Forum E-commerce Brasil is the largest digital commerce event in LATAM over 30,000 participants across three intense days.
It brings together the entire ecosystem: brands, retailers, tech players, and investors from across Brazil and the region.
This year, EVOLVE will be there.
We’re hosting a private dinner for 40 world-class founders, investors, and senior professionals shaping the future of commerce.
We have limited sponsorship opportunities available for the dinner.
Want to be part of it?
Let’s talk
Check our program
Time to Evolve
We now have an official map of our meetups for 2025:
London.
Berlin.
Copenhagen
Madrid.
São Paulo.
Cairo.
Bucharest.
Dubai.
Riyadh.
Each one is an invitation to step outside the silo and into real conversations with senior operators shaping the future of commerce.
If you're interested in partnering with EVOLVE, sharing your events, activating our community, or co-creating something with purpose
Click below to explore how we collaborate.
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