Interview with João Calixto from OnTheGo: Creating Agile Research, The Brazilian Way

OnTheGo is an up-and-coming tech startup that is making itself known in the Brazilian market research community with its chatbot methodology. Their fast-paced dynamic is what enables them to get projects live in under 48 hours, and they achieve great response rates by leveraging people’s inherent draw towards sociability – especially when it comes to the Latin American market. We sat with João Calixto, OnTheGo’s founder and CEO, to get to know his company and understand how their approach can change the way people look at research.

OnTheGo: the internal initiative that took over its parent company

OnTheGo started out as an initiative within João’s former company, Grimpa, a small research organization geared towards product development. At the time, around 2016, social listening and big data were relevant topics to anyone interested in working with tech and insights. It was within that context that he and his team agreed that they needed to incorporate digital elements into the way they were doing research.

Eventually, he found himself at a Meta (then Facebook) event right when Meta was releasing its own chatbot functionality. Two things caught João’s attention – firstly, the idea of automating conversations and what that could accomplish. Secondly, the realization that billions of people are connected on WhatsApp (which Facebook had just recently bought), constantly interacting with the platform simply to chat with others. The app was already a hit in Brazil at that time, and to him, that was fertile ground from which to grow a new way to approach research: turning surveys into conversations.

One of the main things to consider when designing a research questionnaire is the participant’s experience, which can make or break a project. To João, sending someone a 20-minute survey with open-ended questions in the middle of their workday, and expecting that person to complete it to the best of their ability, is almost an insulting thought. He decided to act on his learnings from Meta’s recent updates:

João: “If we can place that research piece in an environment where people already are, where they spend not minutes, but hours of their day talking, maybe we can achieve not only more spontaneity in their responses but also better completion rates. To our excitement, we validated those hypotheses in our first project with Coca-Cola, which was one of the first market research projects using chatbots in the world.”

Since then, OnTheGo’s idea to explore the Brazilian people’s love for chatting has paid off.

João: “I’ve never had an issue with samples. One time we worked with wall painters. That was a very simple group of people. And the thing is, that’s where they express themselves. Many just use voice messages, some typed. In the same way, if you take a C-level executive, they chat on Whatsapp all day.”

What started out as a Grimpa initiative quickly became too big to fit in their small company. They kept moving to develop a more robust platform to attend to larger and stricter client needs, and after three years, they went independent. Now, OnTheGo is absorbing Grimpa, and their team is already on the lookout for a golden initiative that will outgrow OnTheGo, too.

Calixto’s approach to making research truly agile

One of OnTheGo’s core focuses is giving their clients the autonomy to interact with the platform at every skill level, from intern to developer. Their user-friendly dashboard is focused on quantitative data, showing results live as responses come in. The company leverages AI tools in the research design setup – saving time on the project and ensuring a consistent structure – and after that, it quickly moves on to programming the bot. According to João, depending on the project, they’re able to start fielding in under 1 hour. In 24 to 48 hours, most projects close out.

We asked him about his thoughts on the impact of AI on his work moving forward:

João: “With AI, you don’t have to start the thing from scratch anymore. In this sense, that’s here to stay, and it’s going to improve. On the analysis side, it’s a sure thing as well. There’s a lot of good stuff coming. The human eye is super important to connect the dots, but not using [Artificial Intelligence] is crazy. The tools are out there, they almost give us superpowers.”

Speaking of speed, one of João’s biggest focuses is on making research truly agile. Flexibility and adaptability became the main themes of our conversation, and to João, that goes beyond just developing short surveys and getting fast results. He sees a new wave taking shape when it comes to the world of research as a younger crowd starts to come into the industry with tighter budgets and big ideas.

João: “If we think about the food and delivery industry, look at the disruption that happened there. The mobility industry with Uber, the healthtech and fintech industries. What about research? The disruption hasn’t happened yet. It’s a market that’s still just starting to transform, slowly, but it’s changing.”

And the first step for the research industry to lean into this change is to fearlessly adopt a “testing culture,” as he puts it.

João: “This culture of ‘just doing it’… of testing and experimenting is really coming in, which I think is something that’s extremely healthy to tech companies and to new solutions, which goes beyond just the structured questionnaire type of research that we do… there’s a lot of cool stuff on the market out there now, and people are using it, and losing the fear of using it. I think it’s also a generational thing. This younger crowd isn’t afraid of technology; they go in and use it. If it’s bad, you move on, take something else and try it.”

Rolling with the punches and going with the flow, the Brazilian way

João’s experience working with international clients has given him perspective on how the market research industry differs from place to place. When talking about research in England, he mentioned how you should expect a serious and methodical approach to projects and ideas. In his experience, there’s very little room for error but also for experimenting. When thinking about how to create grounds for innovation, he believes flexibility and experimentation are crucial – and that’s where his culture thrives the most:

João: “Brazilians adapt much more easily. They adapt, test it, use it… we’re talking about a market that’s just as big as, in terms of population and geography, but at the same time, the Brazilian is someone who’s less afraid. They put things out there. We also have a newer market, so this is extremely interesting. I see foreigners coming to work here and they bang their heads against a brick wall. One thing is the language barrier, but it’s not just that. On one hand, they’re extremely methodical and, in that sense, extremely correct, but when it comes to flexibility, that’s an upside of Brazil. We’re building interesting stuff here that ends up being reproduced over there.”

To illustrate this, he told us about a project that OnTheGo did for Globo Television, the largest TV network in Brazil, which has over 200 million potential daily viewers, both inside and outside the country.

João: “We put up a QR code live on Globo when we were only a 2-year-old startup. We got 50,000 respondents at the same time. Our server obviously failed, and I panicked, but [Globo] told us, ‘We’ve done this with iFood and NuBank before, don’t worry.’ It was an amazing opportunity. Would a 2-year-old startup in England put up a QR code on live news? They wouldn’t. In the US, they wouldn’t either. So Brazil is really a playground for innovation and for people to try things out, and that’s super interesting.”

And with that, his advice to new entrepreneurs in the market research industry follows the same tune: think outside the box, explore different bubbles.

João: “Don’t get restricted to only research events, research themes, research reports… I think there are a lot of tech events that will bring you solutions, and different layers. It will open your mind to other things. OnTheGo was created from a Facebook event. It had nothing to do with research, they were showcasing bots to do customer service. That’s the main advice.”