With inventiveness, women seek to lead the startup boom in Latin America

At a time when the ecosystem of emerging companies reaches its first big “boom” in Latin America, startups led by women take the lead, as shown by the Uruguayan Apptim and Prometeo, chosen among the 306 of the new acceleration program of Google and the IDB.

The “LAC Women Founders Accelerator 2021”, created by Google with the IDB Lab of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), has the main goal of breaking down gender barriers.

The tilted scales

This is explained by the leader of Google for Startups Accelerator for Latin America, Francisco Solsona, who describes how the technology giant was surprised to find many startups (emerging companies) led by women in the region.

However, despite their high technical quality, they did not have the same investment funds than those run by men, a problem that, he notes, is common in the sector.

“In Endeavor they published a study and pointed out that only 25% of these new digital startups are run by women or have women ‘cofounders’ (co-founders), so the issue of equity, inclusion, diversity is very much needed,” he says.

For this reason, Google selected 20 participants from 306 startups from 29 Latin American countries who will receive special training.

Those chosen, which are divided between Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru and Uruguay, cover sectors as dissimilar as finance, transportation, electronic commerce and mental health.

Innovate from the south

As fintech expand in the world, models such as “open banking” or open banking take effect in Latin America, where, according to Solsona, it is already a “hot” topic.

Born in 2018, Prometeo is conceived today as the largest “open banking” platform in Latin America, since, as highlighted by its co-founder, the Uruguayan Ximena Alemán, it created “a great information route” that connects finance companies from various countries .

For its co-director, the “startup”, which is committed to the exchange of information between financial institutions through API interfaces, was not only a “pioneer”, but also capitalized on its advantage and today, when it provides access to 80 APIs from 35 institutions in nine countries , view their trajectory with pride.

“It is very gratifying to see, three years later, that we anticipated a trend that finally arrived, which today is super installed in markets such as Mexico and Brazil and is growing in others such as Chile and Colombia”, sums up the Uruguayan, eager to present her results alongside the others at the WeXchange Forum Demo Day in December.

Another outstanding case is that of Apptim, an emerging company created in 2019 that, according to its co-founder and CEO, the Uruguayan Sofía Palamarchuk, is built on some ten years of work in quality testing of native Android and iOS mobile applications and today see in the Google program your door to new horizons.

“Not being on the radar of large companies and coming from a not so common country, we have managed to create a technology that today Google is considering as part of the tools that it can use internally,” says the co-founder of this company that, according to Solsona, surprised Google.

Along these lines, Palamarchuk highlights that Apptim is open to an exchange with the North American giant, whose mentoring will serve to enhance Artificial Intelligence, machine learning and marketing, among other aspects.

Break the glass

In a world where the ecosystem of emerging companies grows every day, the success of ventures that, based on a disruptive idea, are launched on the market is not new in the Latin American scene, as Solsona points out, is going through a “super interesting” moment .

“We have new unicorns almost every week coming from all over, from Brazil, from Argentina, from Colombia, from Mexico. Huge investment funds such as Softbank, local Kaszek, Monashees and (others from) the United States are putting many eyes (on the region) ”, he underlines.

Along these lines, the Mexican warns that, with investment and support, those led by women can also reach the value of a unicorn in two or three years.

Although for the Apptim co-creator, gender barriers are “a reality” to which she has adapted from her training in classes full of boys, the key is to overcome the challenges one by one.

“Fortunately, there are many opportunities that are opening more doors to women and the Google program shows that there is great potential in Latin America,” she says.

For his part, Alemán says that the world of emerging companies is “far” from 50/50 in terms of gender and more efforts are needed, since it is a “systemic” issue that “deserves a systemic approach.”