Vivo, the Brazilian subsidiary of Spain-headquartered telecommunications group Telefónica, hired Gabriela Toribio in October 2022 as a managing director for its Vivo Ventures unit. She also serves the same role at Telefónica’s accelerator scheme, Wayra.
Vivo Ventures was formed in 2022 and is equipped with R$320m (about $60m) in capital to invest in growth-stage companies working on entertainment, smart home, business-to-consumer marketplace, energy, healthcare, financial and education technologies.
In addition to supporting Wayra, Vivo Ventures also complements Telefónica’s other innovation initiatives including Telefónica Ventures and Leadwind. Telefónica Ventures was launched in 2007 and provides between €350,000 and €5m per deal while Wayra invests up to €350,000. Leadwind is an independent fund created by the corporate to target scale-ups based in the US, Israel and Brazil.
Before joining the firm, Toribio had founded healthy food store operator Alimentos da Vila in 2017 and remains a partner there. She had also been a teacher at Fiap (Faculdade de Informática e Administração Paulista), an IT-focused higher education institution, for three years from late 2019, where she taught entrepreneurship.
Toribio began her corporate venturing career as head of VC at steel producer Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional (CSN), whose corporate VC arm, CSN Inova Ventures, was selected as the most active CVC in Brazil by GCV, Apex Brasil and Brazilian Association of Private Equity and Venture Capital (Abvcap) in November 2022.
CSN Inova targets industrial technology developers and has four active portfolio companies including the Brazilian online construction management marketplace, Oico, and the US water electrolysis renewable systems generator 1s1 Energy.
Prior to her stint at CSN, Toribio worked for six years at the Brazilian venture firm Votorantim, where she held positions such as innovation manager and senior consultant. She also serves as a coordinator for Abvcap’s Corporate Venture Capital Committee.
See the full list of Emerging Leaders 2023 here.
