Global CFO Excellence Awards 2021

14 Acquisition International - Global CFO Excellence Awards 2021 CFO of the Year 2021 (Brazil): Diego Barreto he largest food ecosystem in Latin America, iFood serves 270,000 restaurants and markets all over the region, allowing end users to find and order food from nearby restaurants. An exemplary network and opportunity, it provides income for over 160,000 delivery drivers across around 1300 cities; Its basis of operation is technologically advanced and industry-leading, developed with artificial intelligence technology in mind and for over 1500 developers and data scientists. The Chief Finance Officer of this company, Diego Barreto, is a Brazilian executive whose passion for finance and its management has been the basis for his outstanding professional development, something he T applies to iFood to great effect. With 15 years of experience, Diego is one of the youngest finance directors in Brazil – but he hasn’t let this hold him back, utilizing his MBA from IMD and training as a lawyer to ensure both himself and his company are consistently on the up and up. Fundamentally, Diego is inspired to continue bettering the company as he has the ability to continuously revolutionize the way the food industry works. With delivery becoming a larger facet of the sector by the day, and it being such a huge employer of people across Latin America, in a wide variety of roles, his work and iFood as a company has the ability to change the standards impacting over 200 million people every day – as well as improving the experience of end users. Furthermore, Diego is especially proud of being one of the first companies to apply investment theory to the Brazilian marketplace. Being one of the ‘unicorn companies’ implementing such a thing has made it stand head and shoulders above its competition in many ways, coupled with how closely it works with other businesses and elements of the industry, making itself a lynchpin. Covid-19 and the resulting outbreak was, of course, a challenge to iFood for several reasons. However, it was one it responded to with elegance and sophistication, participating in the positive spill- over effect in the entire Brazilian ecommerce ecosystem – iFood was able to join the wider industry in a pivot to ensure safe, effective working standards, and benefit from the growing home-delivery market. Foremost, Brazilian end-users are using technology more in their everyday lives, and so implementing it in order to handle food was a logical next step. On the other hand, the value chains it partakes in are being transformed across the board, with many more traditional companies having to look to the operations of iFood and businesses like it, learning to step into the competitive online market in order to survive. iFood has, therefore, been able to avail itself of a resulting massive growth period. This expansion is not something it sees slowing down at any point in the near future, as the growing order-online market segment has given users a convenience simply not afforded to them by in-person food services. From a finances perspective, it shows the importance of keeping a finger on the pulse of economic and cultural paradigm shifts in all industries, but especially in one serving such a vital purpose in today’s world – and this is something Diego himself champions. ‘Think about the New Economy,’ he told us, and this is certainly something that iFood is showing its proficiencies in, forever looking to the future in order to forecast what might come next. Forging the present of the Brazilian food industry – and keeping a constant weather eye on its future – iFood is a growing company. With a delivery app that serves thousands of restaurants across a wide area that is ever- growing, and stepping up to the plate to heed the increased demand of its end users over lockdown, it has made itself a big voice for the effectiveness of adapting to a changing marketplace. Mar21514 Company: iFood Contact: Diego Barreto Website: ifood.com.br