When hardly anyone used or knew about the Internet, Viko emerged in 1999 by detecting the potential of the digital era. What started 25 years ago as an initiative based on collecting emails for marketing campaigns, is now a holding of digital companies that has seven companies and a venture builder that invests in companies that emerged from the group itself and from other areas. Coinciding with its 25th anniversary, the group has invoiced close to 21 million euros in 2024, with a gross margin of more than 12 million, a figure that has doubled in four years.
With headquarters in Pier03 of Tech Barcelona and also with presence in Madrid, Vigo, A Coruña and Mexico City, what is now Viko began to grow from that first pioneering project in email marketing, as one of the first companies dedicated to digital marketing at a national level. "Then we created a technology for sending emails and generating databases, and then we evolved into a digital agency for performance marketing," details Viko's CEO, Rubén Ferreiro.
Through the creation and acquisition of companies, Viko became a "digital business factory": a digital business incubator that now has seven companies in various branches of digital marketing: Elogia Pharma, Kaibos, Candee, Kraz, Optopus, Marketing4eCommerce and M4C Academy, which sell different products and models, but generate synergies among themselves and complement each other.
"We are possibly the first company in Spain to launch 100% digital projects from the beginning," defends Ferreiro. In addition, this activity is complemented by an investment aspect, through which the holding participates in other companies, including projects launched from the group itself and that have opened up to third parties. Among them, are startups such as Yaba, which operates as an aggregator of Amazon sellers and which raised 75 million in an investment round in 2022.
The holding, which has 250 employees —60 of them in Barcelona—, now focuses on the integration of artificial intelligence in all its processes to optimize its productivity, and also on possible new acquisitions.
The latest ones carried out by the group were those of the Optopus agency, specialized in optimizing and improving digital points of sale and bought in 2023 by Viko, and that of IDE360, focused on marketing for the pharmaceutical and health industry, and which was integrated in 2024 into the Elogia Pharma division of the group.
"We are driving an inorganic growth plan, and we expect to incorporate a new company at the beginning of this year," highlights Ferreiro. In addition, Viko does not rule out entering more markets, such as the Colombian one, although for now it is not part of its short-term strategy. All of this, with one goal: "We want to continue growing, and we want to do it by 20%."