The acquisition is the largest ever made by the European group in the country and aims to boost the Italian company’s growth in the domestic market and expand the startup’s operations internationally.
D4Sign, Brazil’s leading electronic signature platform, has been acquired by the Italian technology multinational Zucchetti in a transaction worth R$180 million – the largest acquisition ever made by the European group in the Brazilian market. With this move, D4Sign – now including “by Zucchetti” in its name – aims to bring its solutions to more than 100,000 of the multinational’s clients in Brazil and accelerate the brand’s international expansion. Zucchetti is currently present in over 15 countries.
The internationalization of the signature company started after strong results in Brazil. Today, D4Sign is present in several Latin American countries, having expanded to Mexico earlier this year. With the goal of taking another step towards global expansion, the partners Rafael Figueiredo – the company’s CEO – Rodrigo Figueiredo, Nahim Silva, and Bruno Kawakami saw it as the right time to partner with a powerful brand, and Zucchetti stood out as the ideal company. For this deal, D4Sign received financial advisory support from Pipeline Capital, a global mergers and acquisitions group.
“Expanding operations abroad requires a highly detailed effort. You need to deeply understand the market, establish new contacts, and understand how business is conducted in that region. We believe that being part of a multinational group like Zucchetti, which is present in 15 countries and does business with another 50, will give us the opportunity to accelerate these plans even further by accessing the know-how of a group already established in the international market,” says Rafael Figueiredo.
The Italian multinational has been in Brazil for 13 years, and today the Brazilian market is home to its largest number of clients and partners outside of Italy, providing technology to sectors such as retail, industry, and human resources. Additionally, Zucchetti has a global expansion strategy centered around mergers and acquisitions, with seven other acquisitions already in its Brazilian portfolio. According to the group’s CEO in Brazil, Alessio Mainardi, this strategy is not only based on future growth expectations but also evaluates companies’ track records and key performance indicators, such as recurring revenue, profit margins, and innovation capacity. D4Sign’s performance in recent years has been impressive.
With 35,000 companies served, D4Sign achieved a 400% growth in its business volume between 2019 and 2020, driven by the accelerated adoption of digital solutions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This acquisition is a significant step for Zucchetti in Brazil. Here, we have an extensive client portfolio and more than 3,000 partners who resell solutions and are eager for innovations in their daily activities. D4Sign is a company with robust technology and a highly qualified team, and together, the two companies will be able to offer even more comprehensive solutions to clients in Brazil and abroad,” stated Alessio Mainardi, CEO of Zucchetti in Brazil.
With aligned objectives, the deal was sealed – with the contract signed on the D4Sign platform. For the next two years, during the earnout period, the signature company’s operations will remain independent.
“The digital signature market is becoming a fundamental pillar of global digital transformation, especially in sectors that require agility and security. Advising D4Sign, the leading company in Brazil, on its sale to a major European corporation like Zucchetti reinforces our commitment to innovation and international expansion. This agreement marks not only a strategic achievement for both parties but also highlights the crucial role of technological solutions in driving efficiency and growth on a global scale,” stated Alon Sochaczewski, founder and CEO of Pipeline Capital.
D4Sign’s solutions involve security, automation, and Artificial Intelligence
Since its foundation, D4Sign’s primary concern has been to ensure the legal validity of signatures generated on the platform. Therefore, it has focused on authentication points and consolidated innovative, pioneering solutions in the market, such as PIX and D4Sign Score, with data integration from gov.br. Recognizing the need for clients to save time and automate processes, D4Sign introduced API solutions, templates, and forms into the platform’s scope.
Already a reference in the sector for its focus on security and automation, the company identified another opportunity for improvement, this time in document management. Thus, the company recently launched D4Sign.AI, an ecosystem of generative artificial intelligence that optimizes contract signing by up to 80% and enhances document management, making the process seven times faster than manual methods.
Now, platform users benefit from AI that reads documents and highlights key points, offering a detailed summary of all aspects, such as identifying parties, contract terms, prices, and payment conditions. Additionally, users can interact with the AI through a chat to ask questions related to the document and streamline the signing process. Another recent launch within the platform’s AI ecosystem was the creation of Brazil’s first Big Data tool focused on documents and contracts. By analyzing the information contained in these materials, the tool generates relevant data for insights and risk identification through prior analysis, making company decision-making even more accurate.
