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I spoke to Marcelo Macedo, who used to work at Morgan Stanley before joining up with Paulo Humberg (investor in BrandsClub, founder of ShopTime, Lokau) and João Ramirez (founder of Migux) to get involved with ClickOn.

The three Brazilians have had the support of two Germans:  Klaus Hommels (who has spent time at AOL Germany, BenchMark Capital, and has invested in Facebook, Skype, and BrandsClub) and Oliver Jung (investor in BrandsClub, Brands4Friends, FashionFriends and KupiVIP).

And on top of the quality contributions of that  fine group, they’ve received R$ 17 million to grow the business. Given that ClickOn is not the main Brazilian portal for collective buying, nor the top portal for daily offers, why are they betting on it?

For CEO Macedo (pictured), the solid team and authentic offers (”with no room to toy with the public”) are the basis for success. “The idea is good and the concept is proven. We didn’t come here with no plan just to get a little action and have an adventure,” said the executive.

The big opportunity they see can be summed up by this finding: “e-commerce is taking clients out of the physical stores, people are moving to the web as point of sale.” With ClickOn focused on delivering coupons for use in physical businesses, does this worry him? “Competitors from outside are coming in with a lot of money, but they’re doing things online that people don’t like,” he believes, probably referring to the type of problem TechCrunch discussed in this article.

Another part of the success of ClickOn falls to the commercial representatives which form the majority of the 47 people already hired. Each representative can cover a number of neighboring municipalities. Speaking of people, six work fulltime on the IT team, but the site’s system was purchased abroad.

The plan is to add more cities by the end of the year, including Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte, Recife, Salvador and Fortaleza. “Right now, no offer goes through without the minimum number of buyers,” says Macedo. The offers are only activated when a pre-established number of consumers buy into it. If not, the offer is cancelled. “We have to do a verification to make sure the businesses have good service and a good product, this is required to be a commercial partner with ClickOn.”

The clientele is vast, Macedo believes. “Big and well-established businesses can do short term promotions on ClickOn, small or new businesses can become better known,” he explains, reminding me that the site only keeps a small percentage of each offer. The biggest investment on the part of the advertiser is the discount they give to their clients.

Follow ClickOnSP on Twitter.
Check out more information about the business here (in Portuguese)