With today’s launch of Dinda.com.br, the founding team behind Brazil-based Baby.com.br, is expanding into a new vertical following the success of its original, but more traditional, e-commerce offering targeting new parents. While Baby.com.br is like a Diapers.com for Brazil (and local competitor to Bebestore), with Dinda.com.br, the company is introducing Brazil’s first flash sales site for moms with kids and babies.
“Dinda,” which means godmother in Portuguese, is a popular word in Brazil, Baby.com.br co-founder Davis Smith tells me. “In the U.S., ‘godmother’ doesn’t mean a whole lot, but in Brazil, every baby has a godmother,” he says. “You hear the word constantly.” He says the “baby culture” in Brazil, as whole, is different, too. Expectant mother parking is as common as handicapped parking is here, and pregnant women get to cut in line everywhere they go. “It’s really fun,” he says, “they love children, they love babies, they love giving gifts…it’s pretty special.”
The new flash sales site Dinda has been operating in private beta for the past month, and the company has already grown its Facebook fan base to 125,000 users, Smith says. These were not users brought over from the Baby.com.br fan base, he clarifies, but represent an organically grown base.
For those unfamiliar with the company, Baby.com.br was started by Smith and co-founder Kimball Thomas last year – the same team who previously founded and sold PoolTables.com. The startup raised a $4.4 million Series A from Tiger Global Management, Monashees Capital, SV Angel, Felicis Ventures, Chamath Palihapitiya and Thrive Capital in October. The investment was particularly notable because it was the first time either SV Angel or Felicis had put money into a Brazilian startup.
Since then, Baby.com.br has been growing quickly. TechCruch’s Rip Empson reported that by its third month in operation, the site had reached one million visitors per month, had shipped 1,000 orders in a single day, and had been seeing double-digit growth every month since. It has now seen several days of over 1,000 orders and continues to see the same levels of growth. In six months time, the operation grew from a small team to over 100 employees.
Today, that number is 120 (60% female, says Smith), and it now has a Facebook community of 900,000 moms and dads. The company recently closed on an additional $16.7 million Series B from Accel Partners and Tiger Global, and that money is being used to fund the new venture.
For the public launch of Dinda.com.br, the company will launch one new campaign/brand per day, up from the one per week seen during its beta period. And this number will scale rapidly over the next few months, says Smith. Essentially like a Brazilian version of a Zulily or Totsy, Dinda’s primary target is moms – and of course, dindas. The site will feature mostly Brazilian-sourced items, including clothing and toys, and unlike Baby.com.br, it will also have items for older children.
Noting the popularity of Brazil’s two other top flash sites, Privalia and Brandsclub.com.br, Smith remarks that “they’ve shown that Brazilians really like flash sales model. Things in Brazil are very expensive…people want deals,” he says. “But no one’s really doing it in the baby space.”
The new site is live now at Dinda.com.br.