Vendor lineage
Nava - three companies that became one name
Unicom built the infrastructure, FlexVision built the software, and the merged company had to be both.
Nava is the result of merging business units that started as separate companies: Unicom, working in infrastructure, data centres and connectivity, and FlexVision, created for the development and support of IT platforms and infrastructure operations. Its sector expertise sits in payments, telecommunications, financial services and industry.
The combination describes a real change in what Brazilian enterprise buyers wanted. An organisation that once bought infrastructure from one supplier and software from another increasingly wanted one accountable party for a system that spans both - and the merger of an infrastructure company with a software one is the supply side answering that.
It also explains why the corporate record for firms like this is confusing: the legal entities persist under their original names in registries and court filings long after the brand has been unified, which is exactly what makes them hard to research and easy to leave out of a timeline.
Founding stories
Unicom
What is now Nava was founded in 1996 as Unicom, working in infrastructure, data centres and connectivity. That is the unglamorous end of the market and it is also the durable one: a company that starts by running the floor of somebody else's data centre accumulates access to how the estate actually behaves, which is the asset every later move on this timeline is built from. No founder names are published on the company's own history, and none are supplied here.
The 1996 year and the original name are stated on Nava's own history page, which replaces the directory listing the entry previously had to rely on. Headquarters are recorded in a third-party directory as Barueri, Sao Paulo; the company's own page does not print a city, so none is asserted here.
The timeline
- FlexVision, created rather than acquired
The company created FlexVision, dedicated to developing and supporting IT platforms and to infrastructure operations. An infrastructure business building its own software arm is the supply side answering a change in what buyers wanted: one accountable party for a system that spans both, instead of an integrator for the hardware and a software house for everything above it.
Nava's own timeline places FlexVision as created in 2009. A third-party company listing describes Nava as the result of a merger of FlexVision and Unicom, which reads as two independent firms joining. The two accounts are not compatible and both are recorded. The registry view may explain the difference: the group operates across more than one legal entity, and separately registered units look like separate companies from outside.
- Application Services
Applications were strengthened as a line of their own, which is the point at which a company that runs platforms starts being paid for what runs on them.
- Data and cloud
Data and cloud services were added to the offering, twenty years after a founding built on owning the machines. The sequence is the industry's in miniature: a business whose first asset was infrastructure had to learn to sell the thing that makes infrastructure invisible.
- One name over the group
The group was consolidated under the name Nava, and intelligent automation, digital BPO and IoT came in with it. Consolidating a brand is usually treated as marketing; for a company whose units had grown up separately it is the moment the sales conversation changes from several suppliers with a shared owner to one supplier with several capabilities.
- Advanced Analytics and DigitalOPS
Analytics and a digital operations practice were created, the first lines on this timeline that presuppose the data work of 2016 rather than the infrastructure work of 1996.
- Financial services and payments
A new growth cycle opened with dedicated financial services and payments practices. Payments is the sector where the infrastructure inheritance pays off most directly, because availability there is not a service level but the product.
- Cybersecurity
Security operations were expanded into a cybersecurity offering. Note the order on this timeline: security arrives twenty-five years after infrastructure and two years after analytics, which is a fair account of how Brazilian enterprise service companies actually sequenced it.
- Crescera Capital comes in
Crescera Capital joined as a partner. Outside capital is what turns a sequence of internally created practices into an acquisition programme, and the next two years are that programme.
- The first acquisition
GH Brandtech was acquired, taking the company into creative innovation, and Nava describes this as the start of its mergers and acquisitions journey. Twenty-nine years of building lines internally, then a bought one.
- Two more, both filling in the stack
Ventura ERM was acquired to complete a cybersecurity portfolio and CS Global IT to complete a cloud one. Both are the same move: buying the finished version of a line the company had already started building itself, which is what capital is for.
- Nava - company site: formed from the merger of business units, founded originally as Unicom (infrastructure, data centres, connectivity), with FlexVision created for IT platform development and infrastructure operations
- Company listing describing Nava as the result of the merger of FlexVision and Unicom, with sector expertise in payments, telecommunications, financial services and industry
- Softdex company directory - NAVA Technology for Business, founded 1996, headquartered in Barueri, Sao Paulo, operating as a group across more than one CNPJ including Nava Software Ltda and Nava Servicos e Outsourcing S.A.
Now first-party: Nava’s own history page states 1996 as the founding year under the name Unicom, and dates the consolidation under the Nava name to 2018. The directory listing agrees on 1996 and supplies the Barueri headquarters, which the company’s own page does not print.