Aurea Tech was born within a company in the audiovisual sector and today operates within networks like Assaí and Remax, combining automation, data, and real-time execution for over 1,000 active clients
According to a report published by Exame, signed by reporter Guilherme Gonçalves on June 25, 2026, a system created to solve content production bottlenecks within an audiovisual operation ended up becoming the entry point for a technology company into large Brazilian retail networks. The story behind this transition is mainly about the personal journey of a young 25-year-old from Santa Catarina.
The tool that started it all is called GeoFast and automated the creation of campaigns at scale, based on operational data. With use in clients like Assaí and Remax, the system stopped being just an internal solution and started being applied in complex operations, where speed and production volume make all the difference.
How an internal project became Aurea Tech
From this movement, an internal technology area began to gain its own identity. The name used within the team — Aurea — started to be officially adopted, until the operation separated from the original structure and became an independent company.
-
Brace for Cold: Rare Cyclone and Polar Air Mass to Plummet Temperatures in Brazil, Risk of Frost and Subzero Temperatures in Southern Highlands
-
Man in Brazil Collects Nearly 50 Million Liters of Rainwater on His Property, Sentenced to 30 Days in Jail and Fined $1,500
-
Father of Brazilian gymnast Rebeca Andrade passes away days after her Pan American gold win
-
Brazilian Engineers Launch 292 km Power Line to Ease Energy Bottlenecks in Southern Brazil
“Retail today can no longer wait. If we take too long to transform data into execution, we lose sales. Our role is to shorten this path,” says João Vitor Fagundes, CEO of Aurea Tech.
Today, the numbers prove the size of the problem the company set out to solve. Aurea Tech earned R$ 30 million in 2025, a direct result of expanding the client base and direct operations within retail. Moreover, the company plans to accelerate this growth in the coming cycles and reach over R$ 90 million in revenue by 2026 — driven by the expansion of the embedded squads model, the adoption of automation with artificial intelligence, and entry into new networks and verticals of Brazilian retail.
From popsicle seller to startup founder: the journey of João Vitor Fagundes
To understand how this business model was born, however, it’s necessary to go back decades in the life of the founder himself. Fagundes grew up in Campos Novos, in the western region of Santa Catarina, a city of about 38,000 inhabitants. His relationship with work began very early: at 10 years old, he started selling popsicles on the street to buy basketball shoes. The basics came from home, but anything beyond that depended solely on him.
“I started looking for ways to make money,” he recalls.
This drive didn’t stop there. At 13, he became an office boy at an event club. At 15, he opened an online clothing store on Instagram. And by 16, he was juggling school, work, and his own operation — an uncommon routine for a teenager, but one that helped shape the type of entrepreneur he would become.
Entering production engineering later marked Fagundes’ first contact with structured entrepreneurship. It was during this period that he learned about the concept of a startup and began connecting technology to business models.
“That was the turning point for me, because it was the moment when I started connecting more with the academic side and especially where I discovered the term startup,” he says.
From then on, technology stopped being just a tool and became a path. In a university project, a specific experience would change his trajectory: a winning idea never materialized simply because the responsible developer abandoned the execution. Fagundes’ response to this frustration was to learn to program.
Between 2021 and 2023, he worked as a freelance developer, participating in various technology projects. The turning point, however, came when he was invited to structure a technology front within an already established company in the audiovisual sector. There, for the first time, Fagundes stopped acting merely as an executor and began building within a real operation, with large clients and constant demands. It was precisely in this environment that the first system was born, which later gave rise to Aurea Tech.
How Aurea Tech helps retail giants in their daily operations
The origin of Aurea Tech, therefore, lies within an existing structure that combined technology and content production. The first move was not to create a startup from scratch but to try to solve internal scaling problems. It was in this context that GeoFast emerged as a tool to automate large-volume marketing campaigns with data-based personalization.
Over time, what was internal began to be applied to large networks. The entry into clients like Assaí and Remax marked the transition of the operation to a highly complex environment, with multiple simultaneous campaigns and a constant need for updates. Thus, the technology front stopped being just support and started to operate as the central core of the company.
It is worth noting that Aurea Tech’s model is not based solely on software sales. On the contrary: the company structures its operation within the clients themselves, with dedicated teams that work directly in marketing, data, and execution routines. To sustain this model, the company created a central core of specialists responsible for coordinating the distributed fronts within the clients — a structure internally dubbed “Megazord.”
In practice, this means that part of the client’s operation becomes shared with Aurea Tech, with continuous integration between systems, teams, and decisions — a model that, according to the company, now serves more than 1,000 active clients and helps explain why major Brazilian retail networks have turned to this type of partnership to avoid losing sales due to operational sluggishness.
Fagundes’ journey, however, raises a reflection that goes beyond the numbers: is the true competitive advantage of a startup only in the technology it builds, or in the discipline and urgency learned long before, in situations as simple — and as demanding — as selling popsicles on the street to buy a pair of sneakers?
