Miami, .- The eMerge Americas 2019 forum, a meeting point for the agents of innovation and technology in the continent, began today in Miami with the announcement of the creation of a venture capital fund of 5,000 million dollars focused on technological projects in Latin America.
“Latin America is the future,” Cuban-American Felice Gorordo, new CEO of eMerge Americas, told Efe after SoftBank Group International, the largest technology investment fund, officially presented its Innovation fund.
Gorordo emphasized that this investment is achieved thanks to a Latino, the Bolivian-American Marcelo Claure, chief operating officer of SoftBank, which “recognizes the tremendous opportunity it means for the entire Latin American world.”
This is a large injection into venture capital that will increase investment in Latin America, which it estimated was between 1,500 and 2,000 million dollars in 2018.
“Latin America has been hungry for capital,” said Paulo Passoni, investment partner of Softbank Group International, who praised the “super high quality”, creativity and drive of Latin American entrepreneurs.
Passoni was convinced that the region represents a “great opportunity to help companies develop”.
He specified that the investment priority will be first the “big cities”, since it is “prosperous economies, giants, where you can scale very quickly to help companies.”
As for the sectors to which this multimillion-dollar fund is directed, he pointed out that they will be those “that solve the problems for the average citizen: mobility, education, health, things in which the State often fails completely”.
Passoni mentioned as attractive countries for investment Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Peru, and especially Brazil, not only because of its extension, but because it considers that right-wing governments like Jair Bolsonaro’s in Brazil facilitate the lives of foreign investors.
For Gorordo, this new fund is the “validation” of the importance of Latin America in terms of innovation and entrepreneurship.
Chilean President Sebastián Piñera spoke in the same vein, speaking to those attending the conference through a video from the Chinese wall.
Piñera, the first president who addresses this conclave in its six editions, urged the region to “make a difference” and entrepreneurs to pursue their “dreams”.
The sixth edition of this forum, which in 2018 brought together more than 15,000 visitors, brings together for two days “startups”, investors, business executives and authorities such as the Minister of Economy, Development and Tourism of Chile, José Ramón Valente.
Thanks to the technology, it is expected that, like Piñera did, on Tuesday, the Venezuelan opposition Juan Guaidó, recognized as interim president of Venezuela by the United States Government and those of more than fifty other countries, will be connected with this forum tomorrow. .
“Latin America can compete with anyone, we have to believe the potential we have to compete at the same level as any of the citizens of the world,” said Minister Valente Efe after participating in one of the panels.
The minister made a call to learn from the “mistakes of the past so that this century that brings the industrial revolution, the revolution of knowledge, new technologies, does not leave us isolated as we stayed in the twentieth century.”
For Valente, the “alternative to encapsulate is much worse than the disruptions that this era causes”. The idea is to “trade now not goods or investments, but ideas and technology with the whole world,” he emphasized.
He said that it is something that President Piñera has understood, that he has been touring these days in Asia, especially in China, the first trading partner of Chile, which is followed by the United States, the minister stressed.
For the Chilean minister, it is about “keeping the doors open for trade and investments” to survive.
“The issue of having a vision of the future in which we unite our countries to this new industrial revolution is not a matter of right or left, it is a matter of survival of the countries,” he said.
On the other hand, Valente applauded the participation of Guaidó, president of the National Assembly of Venezuela, in the forum through an interview that will be released on Tuesday.
“We hope that he manages to take power completely in Venezuela as soon as possible,” he said.
He pointed out that Guaidó and the coalition of countries that support him, such as Chile, are making “history” and recalled that Piñera’s government and those of the other countries that make up the Lima Group reject military intervention in Venezuela.
“The steps of Guaidó, the steps of the international community for that change, is a terrain that had not been proven before, of
“The steps of Guaidó, the steps of the international community for that change, is a terrain that had not been proven before, to do it by peaceful, democratic means, that the force of the facts ends up convincing the authorities that they have to leave power, “he said.
“If Venezuela works well, it is a new path for authoritarian regimes,” he concluded.EFE
