The booming startups’ ecosystem in Argentina has been for many years one of the main access doors to technological talent in Latin America. Unicorn companies such as MercadoLibre (FreeMarket) or Globant speak of an ecosystem of great creative capacity and an inexhaustible talent. In fact, Argentina is known in the technological world for its high level of creativity and its willingness to renew itself to adapt to the challenges that the market offers at every moment. The government has launched the Entrepreneurs Act to try to boost the startup ecosystem; the text introduces new financing options for entrepreneurs that facilitate access to financial resources.
Although Argentina is one of the most developed ecosystems in the Southern Cone, the fact is that the problems of access to financing continue to be its main pending issue, a scenario that is not foreign to the rest of Latin American countries. This is why the role that business accelerators are developing to push and consolidate startups is so relevant. In Argentina Wayra and NXTP Labs work contributing capital, training and networking, and then launch those undertakings into the world with the help of angel investors. In the report Techno Latinas, carried out by NXTPLab with the support of the FOMIN/BID, where 5.000 Latin American companies were analyzed, those which were born between 2001 and 2017, shows that there are 124 firms that worth over 25 million dollars, of which 20% are Argentine.
Nine of the total are “unicorns”, meaning that they are worth more than one billion dollars. Among these there are Mercado Libre (Free Market), Despegar.com, OLX and Globant. Entrepreneurs in innovation-based economies today have the highest levels of internationalization, with 20% of their clients located in other markets. Argentina has, therefore, a great potential for growth thanks to its dynamic startup ecosystem. In this article, we have chosen ten companies that represent well Argentina’s creative flow
RESTORANDO
The Restorando startup, founded in 2011, aims to revolutionize the restaurant business by offering customers the opportunity to reserve a table for free 24 hours a day. They started in Argentina but have managed to expand to a good part of Latin America’s countries. The idea is very simple and is based on the personal experience that we have all had when asking for a table: being on a queue can become a real inconvenience and sometimes the wait is not worth it. With this application, management is facilitated, one can access to an integral offer and, most of all, bad and uncomfortable waiting hours are saved. Now you know that when you arrive at a restaurant, you have a reserved table.
3DAR
Buenos Aires is one of the most creative cities in the world: designers, publicists and artists coexist in one of the most dynamic urban microcosms in Latin America. The 3dar study has been incorporated into this ecosystem with great success, and in a short time has already achieved important awards, recognitions and a great reputation. Its professionals offer 3D animation, content creation, live action and postproduction for the film industry and advertising.
CODERHOUSE
Coderhouse specializes in coding courses. Its approach is based on offering support and education to the coders, analyzing their work, discovering their objectives and helping them to prosper. Argentina is one of the countries in the world with the highest number of hackers and experts in programming codes. This wealth of knowledge has been channeled by Coderhouse to apply knowledge in various economics, production and entertainment fields.
ENYE
Enye is a digital agency founded by developers, engineers, designers and specialized IT professionals who design apps for companies. Some of its most prominent clients are MercadoLibre (FreeMarket), Coca-Cola, Tenaris, Clarin, MontageVentures, among others. What started as a project that worked in hardware and software environments ended up becoming a sort of hybrid of digital marketing agency with software factory of mobile applications. As they point out on their website: “We believe that diversity stimulates innovation and creative solutions. What the user needs is our starting point to create technology”. That is, the imagination brought to the technology power.
RIPIO
Ripio is a fintech platform that sells bitcoins to customers in Latin America, one of the regions where there is greater demand for this virtual currency. Users can buy bitcoins with Argentine pesos or other Latin American currencies. Ripio, previously BitPagos, raised more than 5.7 million dollars in funds, which makes it one of the largest bitcoin platforms in Latin America. Ripio’s user base has exponentially increased in recent months and is immersed in expanding process of its already popular digital wallet to Brazil and Mexico.
AFLUENTA
The Latin American fintech platform Afluenta is the first collaborative finance network in Latin America. People invest in credits for other people. Afluenta provides a line of direct communication between investors and applicants. Both parties register in Afluenta and then investors can lend money to valuable recipients without intermediaries, creating a unique platform for the loans. The peer-to-peer business model has revolutionized the loan application process and made available more financing opportunities to Latin America. The company, which was founded in 2012, has already expanded to Peru and plans to expand to Mexico, Brazil and Colombia in a very near future.
CROMA
Croma is an analytics platform for media to measure the distribution of their news on social media and compare their performance against their competitors’. Juan Melano and Juan Schwindt are two of this company founders that from Argentina works with the most influential newspapers in the world. The most influential media in the world, from the BBC, The Huffington Post to The Washington Post, they all use Croma to define their content distribution strategies on social media. The tool offers analytical information so that editorial decisions can be made on how to position the different articles on the networks based on these statistical data.
GIGVY
Gigvy offers an independent programmers’ online community, UX designers, project managers and other software skills. Clients can obtain an economic estimate of their project and then get in touch with a development team that will be responsible for executing their idea. Gigvy stands out because it’s a more practical and cheaper alternative for companies that need development teams for specific projects. The team will create and develop the development’s technical details and Gigvy will offer creative control until the end of the project.
WIDEO
Wideo offers its users a quick and easy way to create animated videos. Without any knowledge of animation or graphic design, Wideo users can greatly improve their digital presentation with professional-looking animations that can be executed with just a few clicks. The company has recently surpassed one million active users and is available to users in Latin America, the United States and South Korea.
QROOM
It is a music platform based on the YouTube library. It uses the content of the famous video platform and play it in a simple interface that only has a searcher for artists and songs. It’s one of the simplest options we can find today. Its design is absolutely minimalist. In this searcher what we have to do is enter the name of the artist or the song (or both), then we will have the available options that match that search.
