Contador24Horas eyes June breakeven

Brazilian financial management site Contador24Horas expects to reach operational breakeven in June 2004, after investing 3.5mn reais (US$1.2mn) since launching in 1999, chief executive Reinaldo Domingues told BNamericas. Domingues said he sees 2004 as a huge growth year for the company, primarily due to a TV advertising campaign and a new strategy where partner sites provide links in exchange for sales commissions. Over the next three years, the company expects its customer base to shoot up from 500 to 25,000, he said. The site targets individuals who want to organize their finances online, and small companies that cannot afford the going rate for buying a piece of financial management software, which is usually between 5,000 and 10,000 reais (US$1,740 - US$3,490), according to Domingues. The company charges 300 reais a year for individuals and 500 reais a year for small businesses. It survived the dotcom blowout because of demand for the service, and the fact that more operations are being carried out online, Domingues said, adding that 95% of Brazilian companies are very small in scale and could use the service. One advantage of the company's web-based applications model is the feature for two users to simultaneously work on a single customer's accounts. Furthermore, off-the-shelf products such as Quicken, of California-based Intuit, are not always available in Portuguese, he said. Brazil is a particularly good market for online financial tools, he added, because of the sophisticated online operations of the government and banks, in terms of providing online services such as tax return forms and banking transaction capability. At the end of 2001, US venture capital firm Verita Investments purchased 71% of Contador24Horas, with the rest held by Brazilian private investors. The company has hired regional data center services provider Diveo for storing customer information, and uses online security solutions from US IT firm VeriSign.