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Discover the story of Evaristo Baraúna, the entrepreneur who overcame a childhood without resources and built an agribusiness powerhouse in Goiás.
In the year 1981, in the city of Jataí, in the southwest of the state of Goiás, the entrepreneur Evaristo Baraúna founded a small grain trading company in the living room of his own home to start a new professional path after accumulating failures in urban commerce.
With only the support of his wife and very few financial resources, the entrepreneur took advantage of the beginning of agricultural expansion in the Midwest region to create a business from scratch.
Today, the operation focused on soybean crushing has transformed into a billion-dollar group that records an annual revenue of over R$ 5 billion, becoming a great example of persistence in the national agribusiness.
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The industrial structure that boosted the billion-dollar revenue
The company’s major economic leap occurred more than a decade after its domestic foundation.
In the year 1994, Evaristo Baraúna decided to expand his activities and sought financing through a bank loan to build his own soybean processing and crushing plant.
Although the start of the manufacturing activity was marked by low demand from buyers, the course of the business quickly changed due to the following factors:
- Focus on quality: The standard of the final product began to attract the attention of demanding customers.
- Accelerated growth: Sales quickly scaled in the Goiás region.
- Production expansion: Market acceptance opened paths to expand the industry’s facilities.
Three commercial failures that preceded the turnaround in agribusiness
The current financial success, however, was preceded by mistakes and frustrations in the urban private market. In the year 1973, motivated by the death of his father, the entrepreneur decided to give up his professional stability to venture into the world of entrepreneurship.
Before discovering his true vocation in the commodities segment, he invested his savings in three lines of business that ended up not prospering:
- Movie theater: His first venture was in the local entertainment sector.
- Bakery: After closing the first business, he tried to manage a bakery.
- Fruit distribution: His last commercial attempt was focused on selling oranges.
Although the business initiatives failed, each attempt helped the merchant to practically understand the difficulties and secrets of running a company.
The approval in a public exam and the move to Goiás
The entire journey towards Southwest Goiás began when the young man turned 17 years old. At that moment, he made the decision to leave his parents’ home to settle in the municipality of Jataí.
Even facing severe financial restrictions and difficulties in maintaining himself in the new city, he kept his focus divided between work shifts and dedication to studies.
This discipline quickly paid off when the student achieved approval in a public exam, thus securing his first formal job in his career.
Childhood without basic infrastructure and work as a shoeshine boy
The great resilience demonstrated by the entrepreneur in the face of obstacles was forged in a childhood lived under conditions of extreme poverty.
Born in 1951, in a small rural community located in the state of Mato Grosso, the boy grew up in a village completely devoid of essential urban infrastructure:
- Absence of piped water in homes;
- Lack of electricity for daily tasks;
- Nonexistence of structured basic sanitation in the village.
This extreme scarcity forced the boy to enter the informal labor market at just 11 years old, beginning his journey as a street shoeshiner and going through other temporary jobs to help support the household.
From that vulnerable childhood in Mato Grosso, he migrated, studied, and established in Goiás one of the biggest references in Brazilian agribusiness.
Source: Portal 6
