Gringo: from market validation to the go-to app for drivers in Brazil

How the partnership between TRINCA and Gringo built a digital product that drove successive investment rounds and culminated in a billion-dollar acquisition.

Gringo was born in 2019 with the idea of simplifying the lives of Brazilian drivers. A few years later, it became one of the main digital platforms for drivers in the country, was acquired by Sem Parar in 2025, and became part of the ecosystem of Corpay, an American multinational payments and mobility solutions company.

Before becoming a benchmark, Gringo was just a hypothesis. And it was at this starting point, when there was no product yet, that TRINCA came in as a strategic partner, helping to validate the opportunity, design the first journeys, and build the application that would hit the market.

Before building, validate: the challenge of taking a hypothesis off the paper

In Brazil, driving comes with paperwork that rarely speaks to each other. IPVA, licensing, fines, CNH points, each obligation lives on a different portal, with its own deadlines, rules, and language. For the driver, this means lost time, the risk of forgetting a due date, and little clarity about their own situation.

Gringo's hypothesis was to bring all of this together in one place, but turning a good idea into a product with traction requires more than intention. The initial challenge was to find out if there was a market before investing in building the application. This meant validating the value proposition with those who would actually use the product, understanding the driver's concrete pain points, and defining the right scope for a first version capable of going to market quickly and evolving based on real use.

TRINCA as a partner since validation

The partnership began with the most strategic phase: understanding the problem before writing any line of code.

TRINCA conducted qualitative research with potential customers, a series of interviews to confront the business hypothesis with market reality. With validation in hand, they structured a workshop to define the main journeys and the scope of the app's first version, prioritizing what would generate immediate value for the user. From there, the work progressed to prototyping and launch.

A dedicated squad took over the product construction and designed a roadmap of developments and new features to sustain growth. The actions prioritized:

market validation before investing in development, reducing the risk of building the wrong product;
definition of journeys and scope based on the driver's real pain points;
agile development of the app's first version, ready to learn from users;
structuring a technological foundation and a roadmap prepared for scale.

"TRINCA managed to deliver a product fully anchored in the user, with excellent market research and UX Design."

Caíque Carvalho, CEO of Gringo

An app to simplify the life of the Brazilian driver

Gringo entered the market as one of the first apps to concentrate services for drivers in a single environment. Instead of navigating through multiple portals, users began to monitor and resolve their obligations directly from their cell phones.

Three fronts structured the product:

Market research: validation of the business model through interviews with potential clients, the basis for all subsequent decisions.
Gringo App: structuring the experience journey and core features, such as IPVA management, fines, and driver's license points, with installment plans for debts and consultation in a few clicks.
Roadmap for new solutions. Planning and development of new digital products in the medium and long term, expanding the app to vehicle services such as repair shops, towing, batteries, and insurance.

The result was a user-anchored product, which translated scattered bureaucracy into a simple and seamless experience

Traction, investment, and a strategic acquisition

In its very first year of operation, Gringo surpassed 5 million downloads and achieved a 4.8 rating on both the App Store and Google Play, even leading the automotive category in the Google store in 2023.

In 2023, Gringo raised BRL 150 million in a round led by Valor Capital, part of the more than BRL 400 million the company gathered throughout its trajectory. The user base followed the same pace and exceeded 20 million registrations.

The destination of this journey was the acquisition by Sem Parar, of the Corpay group, in 2025, in a transaction valued at approximately BRL 1 billion. The acquisition confirmed the solidity of a product that started as a hypothesis and consolidated itself as a reference.

A partnership that validates, builds, and scales

Gringo's trajectory shows what TRINCA does when it joins at the beginning of the story. It was not about executing an already defined product, but about reducing uncertainty, validating the opportunity, and transforming a hypothesis into a platform with traction.

From research to launch, from the first MVP to the evolution roadmap, the approach combined business vision, user research, and technical excellence to build something that did not yet exist. The outcome, a company that internalized its operation and was acquired for approximately R$ 1 billion, reinforces TRINCA's role as a strategic partner for those building what comes next, from scratch to the next step.

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