Pluria is a solution for remote and hybrid work that helps companies keep their distributed teams connected and engaged by providing them access to nearby workspaces.
The startup was founded in 2020, and in May 2023, it secured a $2 million seed round for further expansion.
Andrei Cretu and Gabriela Draghia, co-founders of Pluria, spoke exclusively with The Recursive about their goal to internationalize in Latin America as an early-stage startup and their vision for the future of their company.
Cretu asserts that they are living the dream of building a new product and using it to have a better work experience, gathering in different spaces, eating with the team, or individually. Currently, the team consists of 25 people, with half in Europe and the other half in Latin America.
“We firmly believe in the power of in-person collaboration and flexible work models. This is the dilemma of hybrid work: Can you have both without sacrificing the flexibility that is highly valued today?
“It’s possible, and companies can have productive teams that collaborate better, meet in physical space, and, at the same time, companies can expand from a single office to a multitude of offices that their employees can access whenever they want,” explains the founder to The Recursive.
Pluria is present in 13 countries, mainly in Latin America, which is its primary market: Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, and now Uruguay. It is also present in Europe: Spain, Portugal, Romania, and Bulgaria.
“Thanks to my previous startup, 7card, which is now part of GymPass, I got a closer look at the opportunities there (LATAM) because GymPass is the global leader in the fitness subscription model and is originally from Brazil.
“As I was disengaging from my old startup, I met some people from the region and got to know it better. If we are in a market where services are distributed through the Internet, we should think of the world as a blank canvas,” says Andrei.
On the other hand, Gabriela, the other co-founder, highlights that she had only been in contact with Latin America as a tourist and that it was an emerging market 10 years ago compared to Eastern Europe and over 10 times larger.
“What we later discovered was that it is not only an emerging market with many opportunities, but it is also the hiring ground for American companies, with many people hired remotely, in the same time zone, and at lower costs,” emphasizes Draghia.
Certainly, after analyzing the Latin American market and getting to know it in more detail, Pluria decided to expand in the region, where they have achieved remarkable results.
“Three months after the launch in Colombia, we not only had a fairly solid network of spaces, which is a kind of hygiene factor for us, but we already had our first client.
“What happened and led us from having operations in Colombia to where we are today is that our clients started opening new locations throughout Latin America and encouraged us to expand to other cities,” shared Cretu.
The startup founder assures that they are a unique interface for remote teams throughout Latin America, which he considers a significant achievement.
Andrei also detailed that what they are currently building focuses on solving the problem of hybrid work for companies and helping them bring their teams together, collaborate better, regardless of their location.
“Soon, we will launch a team engagement feature in the Pluria app that will allow our users to invite their colleagues or friends to a space in the network, connecting with other people naturally.
“This is how teams come together, and we want to offer them the best tool to do it on their own terms, in spaces that suit their needs because we firmly believe that the ideal hybrid work setup is unique for each company, and we can help them find it,” concludes Cretu.
“Pluria is also a way for us to help companies reduce their carbon footprint.
“The ESG goals that companies will have starting in January 2024 to report all initiatives they take to reduce their carbon footprint and how we align with them is also something we are proud of,” Gabriela added.
