MercadoLibre Teams with Wayra to Fund Argentine Startups
May 17th, 2013By Narayan Ammachchi
Start-up accelerator Wayra and MercadoLibre have joined forces to fund and train early-stage technology entrepreneurs in Argentina. The e-commerce portal MercadoLibre said it would ‘co-invest in certain ventures’ selected by Wayra, a start-up accelerator from Spanish telecom giant Telefonica.
The agreement comes weeks after Wayra issued a call for young entrepreneurs to send in their applications for venture capital by May 26. The e-commerce portal is likely to invest in companies capable of creating new applications and services to its community of buyers and sellers. MercadoLibre recently announced the launch of an investment fund of $ 10 million that will be entirely focused on new ventures that use their platforms.
According to analysts, MercadoLibre’s aim is to strengthen the e-commerce ecosystem in the region it operates. MercadoLibre is “an ideal partner for acceleration and internationalization of our companies,” said Andrew Sabol, Country …
Some of the best moments of Nearshore Nexus ’13 happened on the fly – during networking breaks, on the way to sessions, in hallways, at lunch or during our closing “Nexus After Dark” reception. Our team has gathered the best photos from those moments here in one album on our Facebook page – take a look and recall the great memories!
View Slideshow: Business Networking at Nearshore Nexus
Globant’s Michref: Getting vulnerable youths connected
By Narayan Ammachchi
TesteAR, a manual software testing training program created and launched by Globant, has won this year’s prestigious Foundations for the Future (F4F) Award for corporate social responsibility (CSR). The award – instituted jointly by the Nearshore Executive Alliance and Nearshore Americas – is designed to create awareness about the importance of social impact programs in the Latin America global services industry.
By Narayan Ammachchi
Cessi – the privately supported IT association promoting Argentina firms – has launched four offices across America in a bid to bring greater attention to the Argentina software and IT services sector.
The new offices are in Austin, United States, São Paulo, Brazil, Bogotá, Colombia and Mexico City, Mexico. The IT lobby group is selecting employees for its new offices and drawing up operating plans.
Cessi will use these offices to offer member companies operational support and technical advice, which they may need for promoting their products and services abroad.
The lobby group is also expected to publish reports about the supply and demand for Argentinean IT services in the global marketplace. Over the coming years, Cessi will also set up similar offices elsewhere in the region, particularly in the United States.
Organizing IT fairs in foreign countries and launching trade missions are some of …
ECLAC Urges Member Countries to Promote Digital Economy
April 5th, 2013By Narayan Ammachchi
The digital economy accounts for 3.2 percent of GDP in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico, says a new study from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
As far as the digital economy is concerned, the ECLAC says, countries in the region are progressing at ‘two very different technological speeds’.
In some countries, information and communications technologies (ICTs) are having a positive impact on economic growth, while in other countries progress is slower.
“The three most advanced countries have 15 times as much development than the ones lagging the furthest behind. Furthermore, the digital divide between Latin America and countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in terms of mobile broadband is getting wider (11% versus 55% penetration in 2011),” said Alicia Bárcena, ECLAC Executive Secretary, addressing the ongoing Ministerial Conference on the information society …
Quasar Ventures to Build Ten Tech Start-up in Next Four Years
April 4th, 2013By Narayan Ammachchi
Silicon Valley venture capital fund Emergence Capital Partners has agreed to invest $5.4 million in Quasar Ventures, asking the Latin American start-up builder to use the money for establishing ten global technology companies over the next four years.
Quasar hopes to build technology start-ups offering seed capital, a robust business model as well as an access to its global network of companies. (Quasar backers includes top executives from well known Latin American innovator, Globant.)
“Quasar is neither an investment fund nor an incubator. We are an experienced group of entrepreneurs with the mission of building groundbreaking and successful technology companies by bringing together robust business models and talented entrepreneur teams,” said Quasar Ventures founder and CEO Pablo Simon Casarino in a press release.
Quasar Ventures has developed a concept called “parallel entrepreneurship” that identifies promising business models and then finds entrepreneurs to implement them.
The …
By Narayan Ammachchi
The Argentine IT industry is showing surprising strength during the last year, despite a steady stream of downbeat news about fiscal crises and economic uncertainty. The country’s software industry registered more than 10 percent growth in 2012 and generated more than US$900 million in export revenue, according to a statement from the country’s Minister of Industry, Debora Giorgi.
New Buenos Aires Airport Terminal Doubles Capacity
April 1st, 2013By Narayan Ammachchi
Argentina has added a modern terminal to its Ezeiza International Airport in Buenos Aires. President Cristina Fernandez recently inaugurated the terminal built at a cost of US$111 million.
The new terminal doubles the Airport’s capacity to handle passengers. “It has the capacity to process 4,000 passengers at peak hours and thus meets the immediate and future growth,” stated Airports Argentina 2000, the company that has built the terminal.
The new terminal is considered long overdue, given that passenger traffic reached 24 million in 2012, stated the President. “Our tourism industry is growing. More people are coming from Brazil, Chile and the rest of Americas,” Fernandez said.
More than a thousand people worked for 17 months to construct the terminal, said the President, claiming that the Ezeiza Airport is one of the most modern airports in Latin America.
Announcing the Power 50 2013: The Real Operators
March 25th, 2013
Members of the third annual Nearshore Americas Power 50 Ranking – announced here today – demonstrate the real character of this emerging, chaotic and scrappy young industry. The ranking, which is the result of a five-month nomination and review process, strives to bring to light the spark and inspiration that powers the Nearshore business community. The list is remarkable for several reasons.
NXTP Labs: Taking Argentina’s Entrepreneurial Buzz Across LatAm
March 15th, 2013
Costa of NXTP: “We like mobile a lot”
By Tarun George
Founded in 2011, WeHostels is a Latin American startup that offers mobile apps for young travelers. Early in its life, the firm’s founders received some investment help from an Argentinean accelerator fund. Six months later, they raised $1.3 million and moved to New York, where they continue to grow steadily. But this article is in fact not about WeHostels but about that Argentinean fund: NXTP Labs.
