The year 2020 got off to a busy start for Nubank. The fintech made its first acquisition, purchasing Plataformatec, a specialist in digital product development and growth. The acquisition model chosen was the "acqui-hire," in which the focus is not on obtaining a product or service, but on hiring the company's professionals.
Acqui-hire (or acqui-hiring) is most common in the startup sector, where companies seek rapid growth and therefore need highly skilled talent. It is also used to address the shortage of professionals in specific fields, such as technology.
In Nubank's case, Plataformatec's staff had already provided consulting services to the fintech, work that resulted in productivity gains across several areas of the company. Impressed by the results, the fintech decided to acquire the consultancy.
Another Brazilian startup also recently opted for the acqui-hire model. Gympass
acquired a Portuguese artificial intelligence startup to bring its technology team on board. The reason was the same: the difficulty of finding talent in the field. The company, which relocated its headquarters to New York, USA, has made the search for international professionals a core business strategy. Recently, the company opened a technology center in New York focused on automation and machine learning.
Not by coincidence, many of the most in-demand professions in 2020 are tied to technology. LinkedIn released a report listing the 15 fastest-growing professions in Brazil since 2015 that are expected to remain in high demand this year. Of those 15, 9 are IT-related — including cybersecurity engineer, data scientist and data engineer, artificial intelligence specialist, and software developer, among others.
See the full list.
This trend is likely to remain strong if Nubank has anything to say about it — the company has stated that it will continue hiring technology professionals to accelerate its growth this year.
Do you believe there is a shortage of qualified technology professionals in Brazil?
Source: Startse