Our Mission
Dignity is not a feature. It is the foundation.
Aki is building the financial, operational, and social infrastructure that hundreds of millions of informal workers around the world have lived without. We start in Brazil. We are building for the world.
The largest workforce in the world
is the most invisible.
2B+
informal workers on the planet
Cooking, selling, building, repairing — the spine of the global street economy.
37M
Brazilians working informally
In one of the largest economies in the world.
138K
street vendors in São Paulo alone
Operating on sidewalks, beaches, parks, and corners every single day.
They cook, sell, build, repair, and move goods across cities and coastlines that depend on them entirely. They are the spine of the global street economy, which itself represents a multi-trillion-dollar slice of human commerce.
And almost none of them have what every formal business takes for granted.
No bank accounts. No payment infrastructure. No contracts. No credit history. No health insurance. No legal protection when their goods are seized, their stalls are cleared, or their families face an emergency. No retirement plan. No safety net when the weather, the economy, or a single bad day takes their income away.
They are not poor because they don't work. They are poor because the systems that should serve them were never designed to.
That is the problem Aki exists to solve.
A platform built with vendors, for vendors.
Aki is a global social enterprise headquartered in the United States, piloting in Brazil. We build technology that helps informal street vendors earn more, work less, and live with the dignity and stability that formal workers take for granted.
We are organized around three layers, each one designed to do what no single product has done before.
Marketplace
A mobile app that connects vendors with customers and lets them sell, deliver, and accept digital payments without needing a storefront, a website, or a bank-issued card reader. We meet vendors where they already are: on the beach, on the corner, on the move.
AI Assistant
A Portuguese-language assistant designed for vendors who have never used business software, written documents, or formal bookkeeping. It helps them set prices, manage inventory, communicate with customers, and operate at the same level as someone with an MBA — without needing one.
Financial Tools
Access to micro-credit, savings, insurance, supplier deals, and benefits that informal workers have historically been locked out of. This layer exists specifically to repair the gap between informal work and the formal economy.
We are not building a delivery app. We are building the infrastructure layer for a workforce the world has overlooked for a hundred years.
Our Commitment
The majority of our profits will go back
to the people who made them possible.
Aki is built as a social enterprise. As we grow, we publicly commit to channeling the majority of our net profits back into the communities of informal workers who make this platform possible.
This is not a marketing line. It is a structural decision about what kind of company Aki is — and what kind of company we refuse to become.
Vendor financial inclusion programs — first-time access to banking, savings, credit, and insurance
Micro-loans designed for informal workers, with terms built around their cash flow, not against it
Healthcare, mental health, dental, and vision access for vendors and their families
Education and training in business operations, financial literacy, technology, food safety, and legal compliance
Family support programs, including pathways to better schooling and higher education for vendors' children
Direct grants and partnerships with non-profits already doing this work on the ground
When we generate profit, the majority of it goes back.
That is the deal.
Last updated: May 2026
The roadmap is bigger than the app.
A marketplace is the entry point. What Aki is actually building is a parallel infrastructure layer for informal workers — one that delivers, over time, the same protections, services, and opportunities that formal employment quietly provides to everyone else.
Some of what follows is live today. Most of it is on the roadmap. All of it is real.
The cruelest math of street vending is that the only way to earn more is to work longer. Twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours under the sun, away from family, exposed to weather, crime, and exhaustion. Aki is built to break that math.
Predictable income, even when the beach is empty.
Aki is building a Vendor Income Guarantee program — a model where Aki pays selected vendors a fixed monthly amount in advance, in exchange for their continued activity on the platform. For vendors, this means guaranteed baseline income regardless of weather or season. For Aki, it means a more stable, engaged vendor network that grows with us instead of churning out during hard months.
We are honest about this: it is good for vendors and it is good for Aki. This is not charity. It is the kind of arrangement that formal companies offer their employees as a salary — and we see no reason informal workers should be excluded from it.
- Guaranteed baseline income, regardless of weather, season, or foot traffic
- The ability to plan rent, groceries, school costs, and savings around a number they can count on
- Pre-orders and scheduled pickups so vendors prepare what they know will sell, instead of guessing all day
- Digital storefronts that work while vendors rest, eat, or are home with their children
- Inventory and pricing intelligence powered by AI — no trial-and-error costing weeks of income
- Workforce tools that let vendors hire seasonal help, or find work themselves in the off-season, all within Aki
Earning more should not require disappearing from your family. We are building toward the opposite.
What we count is what we care about.
Any company claiming social impact should be able to show its work. Aki tracks and publishes the following metrics, with reporting cadence increasing as we grow.
Vendors onboarded — total active partners on the platform
Percentage previously unbanked — share of vendors gaining first-time access to digital payments through Aki
Average income lift — pre- and post-Aki monthly earnings, measured quarterly
Working hours reduction — average hours worked per week, tracked over time
Benefits coverage — vendors with access to health, dental, mental health, and insurance through Aki partnerships
Family outcomes — children of vendors enrolled in education programs and scholarships disbursed
Loans and savings activity — micro-loans issued, repayment rates, average savings balances
Geographic reach — cities, regions, and countries with active vendor communities
Profit reinvested — annual reporting of the share of net profit returned to vendor-facing programs
We will publish an annual impact report once the pilot graduates into full launch, and make raw, anonymized data available to researchers and partners by request. Full impact reporting begins with the conclusion of our Brazil pilot.
This is a pilot, not a pitch deck.
Aki is currently in pre-launch pilot. Our first cohort is being onboarded on the coast of São Paulo state — specifically in Praia Grande and Santos — with an initial group of 10 to 15 partner vendors.
We have built and deployed:
A full Field Playbook (eight iterations) covering vendor outreach, onboarding, training, and retention
A vendor acquisition pipeline including lead capture, social media in Portuguese, and a WhatsApp-based funnel designed for low-tech-literacy users
Branded vendor kits including UV-resistant shirts and waterproof signage, distributed at our cost
Live partnerships with ACEPG (Associação Comercial e Empresarial de Praia Grande) and the local Associação dos Barraqueiros (president Luiz Henrique Berro)
A media partnership with Praia Grande Agora (428,000 followers) for community-level visibility
The Aki mobile app, live on the Apple App Store, fully localized in Portuguese
A bi-regional team with strategic operations in Los Angeles and ground execution in Brazil
Active outreach to FATEC (Brazilian technical colleges) to recruit interns from underrepresented communities, building a talent pipeline that mirrors the community we serve
Everything you see on this page is grounded in work that is already underway. The roadmap is ambitious; the foundation is real.
From São Paulo's coast to every coastline.
Brazil is the right place to start. Brazil is not where we end.
Our long-term vision is to expand Aki across Latin America, Southeast Asia, and parts of Africa — geographies where informal street economies are largest, most invisible, and most underserved. Each new market will follow the same pattern: deep local partnership, ground-level vendor onboarding, language and cultural localization, and a country-specific giveback program that reinvests in the community.
We are not building a Brazilian app. We are building a global infrastructure layer, and Brazil is the first proof.
A Note From The Founder
When I was a kid, my family struggled. I grew up helping my mom sell my grandma's deep-fried sausage rolls on the beaches of São Paulo. Every morning she'd head out with a big batch, and every morning I'd eat half of them before she could sell a single one. She needed the money. She also couldn't say no to her son. That love, somehow, accidentally became our marketing. People on the beach would see me eating those rolls with so much joy that they wanted them too.
Looking around, I realized every vendor had a tactic. Some dressed up as superheroes to catch kids' eyes. Some used speakers, horns, flags — anything to be seen. But for all of them, including us, it came down to luck. Being in the right place at the right time, in front of the right person. That was the whole business.
Life eventually opened doors for my family. I moved to the United States. Years later, I went back to Brazil with my wife and wanted to share with her the foods and drinks I grew up with. We went to the beach, and I started walking around looking for raspadinha. I walked the whole stretch. Couldn't find anyone selling. On the way back, I saw people sitting on the sand drinking raspadinha — and I realized I had just missed the vendor.
Same story. Fifteen years apart. Nothing had changed.
I had only ever thought about this as a vendor's problem. That day I realized it's a customer's problem too. Two people who would have made each other's day better, separated by a few hundred meters of sand and no way to find each other.
Aki is the company I wish had existed for my mom. And for me, walking that beach looking for raspadinha. We are building it for the next generation of vendors and the families who depend on them. And we are going to do it without forgetting why we started.
Victor Calfat Luzzi
Founder and CEO, Aki
This only works if it's not just us.
Vendors
Join Aki and start selling, earning, and building security for your family.
Partners
We're looking for non-profits, vendor associations, healthcare providers, educators, and advocacy organizations to build this with us.
Investors
We're raising. If you believe informal workers deserve world-class infrastructure, we want to talk.