The best 8 Endeavor companies in Colombia
A few months ago I visited Colombia and had very interesting conversations about entrepreneurship. I’ve met with the staff of Endeavor (a global NGO for the promotion of high-impact entrepreneurship) in Bogotá and Medellin, as well as having a meeting with Carlos Londoño, Endeavor Entrepreneur and founder of On Vacation. And coincidentally, on one of my bus trips I sat next to one of the managers of the area of entrepreneurship of the Bogota city hall. Below I briefly discuss some insights regarding the colombian entrepreneurial ecosystem and the Endeavor portfolio companies that I most liked!
Colombia is one of the most promising countries to start a business in Latin America. It occupies the 44th position in the Global Entrepreneurship Index (2017) and has presented economic growth and new opportunities, as well as a motivated population to endeavor. The government has tried to encourage innovation through tax-deduction programs or with innovation centers such as Ruta N, although it still has a number of challenges ahead. In general, the country’s challenges are very similar to those in Brazil — bureaucracy, talents, access to capital, etc. Of these, certainly the state’s intrusion by creating new rules at all times and not having a clarity about its conduct is what makes harder the life of the the entrepreneur. Access to loans in the financial market is another problem: besides being expensive (although cheaper than in Brazil), it is often unavailable, that is, even if the entrepreneurs could and wanted to pay more for the loan, they will take time to find it or not find at all who could provide it to them.
Endeavor Colombia is one of the largest Endeavor offices in the world and has a very similar operation to Brazil, also carrying out initiatives of entrepreneurial education and acceleration programs for entrepreneurs who have not yet become part of the portfolio. I was very excited about the companies supported by the office. Below I’ll tell you a bit about the 8 most interesting (of course, focusing mainly on tech):
ON VACATION
Tourism
This company revolutionized the tourism market in Colombia, allowing much more people to have access to tourist routes. There are more than 300 thousand travelers per year and a growth of more than 30%. ON VACATION works with a number of partners (airlines and hotels), but has gradually expanded its own hotel networks in order to improve its margins. In addition, another factor that differentiates them is the use of direct sales for their products, which follows practically the same model of the sales process of Natura.
GRABILITY
Mobile platform
Optimizing sales conversion is one of the great challenges for retailers. GRABILITY has a 100% white-label platform that allows any vendor to customize their mobile virtual store. It has large colombian retail clients in the portfolio such as Éxito and Carulla. But the most interesting was his spin-off: Rappi.
RAPPI
Delivery
This startup is awesome! Delivers all kinds of things, different from an Ifood, which in Brazil is focused on restaurants. With Rappi you connect directly with a motoboy and can order from food to grocery shopping or any other type of service that requires a transport. It is already very famous in Colombia and should start operating in Brazil. One story I heard from a colombian friend that shows the peculiarity of the app was when 3 of her friends were playing video game and needed one more person to play one pair against the other. Problem solved! They called a Rappi who went to their house and completed the open position.
TORRE
http://torre.co/ | https://bunnyinc.com/
Marketplace
The company started with VoiceBunny, a locution marketplace. Clients could outsource their audio production for advertisement, dubbing, animation, cinema, etc. The Company moved its location to Silicon Valley and, in a few years, formed a group, acting on other areas and forming Bunny INC: translation (TranslationBunny) and content production (WritingBunny). This group of companies is part of the Torre Group, which also has social projects and Voice123, another marketplace to find voices of actors. I met the founder, Alexandre, a few years ago and it is interesting to note that their expansion follows a focus on what they do best: the connection between creative production services. They have great clients like Disney and Apple and can be a great solution for these types of service.
ACSENDO
Talent Management Software (SaaS)
Managing teams in organizations is one of the biggest challenges an entrepreneur can have. There are numerous tools and methodologies to evaluate if each person is achieving his or her best result and meeting expectations. ACSENDO helps companies in three areas: 1 — assess the organizational climate; 2 — monitor what are the gaps of individual and collective competencies within the teams; 3 — manage objectives and KPIs. It has large clients like Telefonica, Mapfre, the Colombian government and can also serve companies from outside the country with software versions in English and Portuguese.
ALDEAMO
Mobile services
ALDEAMO offers services that support low-end cell phones. Without the use of the internet it is possible to have access to a series of services, using only sms. For example, have access to financial information, schedule medical consultations or look for any kind of information. They are a platform in which companies can connect with users offering services and information for both entertainment and transactional purposes. It is similar to Movile, which was also supported by Endeavor Brazil and today is the largest company in the Latin American segment.
TAPPSI
Mobile App
Getting a taxi in Colombia is also easy. TAPPSI connects passengers with taxi drivers. Just like 99Taxis and EasyTaxi do in Brazil. Today they operate in Colombia, Peru and Ecuador. Talking to taxi drivers seemed to me to be the dominant app on the Colombian market, although they are also suffering from the competition from Uber, which is present in the country, but still unregulated.
PAY U
Fintech
PAY U is a payment platform that allows companies to make transactions through websites, apps, email, mobile, etc. It is similar to PayPal and Moip.
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