The startup Gaivota is an almost unique case in the innovation ecosystem for agribusiness. While most young companies try at all costs to make themselves known, their partners work almost confidentially in systems for digitizing agricultural-related processes, such as automation for dairy cattle farms. It already has customers, but has not presented itself to the market, does not even have a website or information on social networks. It received a contribution (undisclosed amount) from investors, who do not care about discretion and are in no hurry to reap results. It is the dream scenario of any entrepreneur. Even more when we know that behind this investment is one of the most illustrious surnames of the financial market in Brazil. “Our base in the capital is very patient, without pressure”, says Antonio Moreira Salles, a partner at Mandi Ventures, the fund that made the bet on the almost unknown Gaivota. At least for others. The heir to the founding family of Unibanco and shareholder of Itaú – his father is Pedro Moreira Salles, current chairman of the Board of Directors, and his grandfather was Walther Moreira Salles, one of the most respected bankers in the country. an agtech version of the dynasty saga. The fortune of his great-grandfather, João Moreira Salles, the founder of Unibanco, was built from coffee. First, at the beginning of the 20th century, in the purchase and sale of grains in the interior of São Paulo and Minas. Afterwards, he started to offer credit to coffee growers, who paid, in part, with production. Then, he started to command some of the largest coffee growing operations in the world. Between the 1950s and 1960s, with his sons already in charge of the group's financial affairs, the patriarch dedicated himself to the expansion of coffee plantations through areas of purple land in the northwest of Paraná. He was also a partner of the Rockefeller, a mythical clan of American bankers, in the export of coffee and in livestock farms in the Pantanal region. Cambuhy, the holding company that manages the investments of Pedro Moreira Salles, is named after a large family farm in the region of Matão (SP), one of the last remnants of the agricultural empire.
This text was translated by machine from Brazilian Portuguese.