RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – From May 4 to 6, the city of Porto Alegre will host for the first time the South Summit Brazil, one of the largest global meetings of entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystems.
It is supported by IE University, the Government of the State of Rio Grande do Sul, the City of Porto Alegre, and nearly thirty partners, including AWS, Dell, Gerdau, Sebrae, Equatorial, Renner, Randon, Meta, and Sicredi.
During this meeting, 50 finalists of the South Summit Brazil Startup Competition were selected from more than 1,000 projects submitted, coming from 17 different countries, mainly Brazil (45%).
But there are also companies from the United States, Spain, Russia, India, Nigeria, and Turkey, as well as from eight Latin American startups, including two Colombian, two Mexican, two Ecuadorian and one each Peruvian and Chilean, distributed among the different categories of the Startup Competition.
This meeting will allow these startups to give their project a high profile and connect with investors and companies looking for innovation. Among them, 80 investment funds, 18 of them international, with a portfolio of more than US$65 billion.
The 50 finalists were selected by a committee of renowned investors and innovation experts who considered criteria such as innovation, viability, scalability, sustainability, team, and interest for potential investors.
The Spanish speaking Latin American finalists are:
- Bridger Lab (Peru): integration platform as a service (IpaaS) that helps companies significantly improve their online user experience.
- Amsa (Mexico): manufactures injection-molded plastic products used in fiber-optic networks. Its products are used in fiber optic cables that need to be installed.
- Aerialoop (Ecuador): its main products are LOOPs, hovercrafts that can make 300 deliveries per week. A Loop system is a combination of two mobile hubs and two VTOL drones, as well as all the technology needed to perform all flights, with airline-level security and a capacity of 300 deliveries per week on several international routes.
- Bleet (Ecuador): a start-up that brings together customers who need to send a package on the same route. Through a single app, the courier service becomes truly personalized and helps reduce the carbon footprint of deliveries by using members’ available spaces on the same route.
- Carryt (Colombia): last-mile logistics company optimized through geocoding algorithms, route optimization algorithms and integration with carbon offset service.
- Reworth (Mexico): connects financial institutions and merchants to obtain actionable data and offer cashback to end customers through a fully integrated API solution.
- Omnix (Chile): Solves complex processes in real-time and provides solutions through applied artificial intelligence. It automates processes, anticipates errors, improves the company’s value chain, and frees up management’s time to shift efforts to higher-value tasks and increase them.
- Talentu (Colombia): an all-in-one freemium HR platform that serves as a low-cost procurement and data collection channel for distributing financial services to underserved workers.