Peixe Urbano Founder: “Perhaps Groupon Thought It Was Fine to Arrive in Brazil With Fake Deals” [Video]

Peixe Urbano means, in Portuguese, “Urban Fish”. That’s a fun fact.

Here are a few more: Peixe Urbano is a Rio-based Groupon clone that’s doing very nicely indeed by tailoring its service precisely to a Brazilian audience. The site offers 30 deals a week, across multiple cities. According to the company’s own numbers, they’re averaging a little over 1000 purchases per deal: 30,000 sales a week. Peixe Urbano takes 50% commission on every sale. The site’s popularity is growing fast amongst traders too: 300 companies a day apply to have their deals sold through Peixe Urbano.

Brazil is one of the more interesting emerging markets: the number of venture capital firms there is growing, as is the number of interesting tech startups emerging. It was for those reasons (and more) that Sarah chose to visit the country as part of the research for her forthcoming book on entrepreneurship in emerging markets. And it was for those reasons that we were keen to invite Peixe Urbano founder Julio Vasconcellos to be this week’s guest on Too Long; Didn’t Watch.

We asked Julio about the startup climate in Brazil and demanded that he respond to those who say the country is little more than an incubator for scammers and copycats.Video below.