Endeavor Welcomes 27 New Entrepreneurs from 12 Countries at the 82nd International Selection Panel in Buenos Aires

Endeavor selected 27 entrepreneurs leading 18 companies from 12 countries at the 82nd International Selection Panel (ISP) in Buenos Aires held September 5-7, and hosted by Endeavor Argentina. Endeavor now supports 1,742 entrepreneurs leading 1,088 companies in 32 growth markets around the world.

Top business leaders and investors from the region and around the world, including Luis Lora (Allen & Company) and John Farrell (Acelera Capital) among others, served as panelists at the event. Panelists were drawn from Endeavor’s extensive network of board members, mentors, supporters, and experienced Endeavor Entrepreneurs.

At the ISP, which was attended by over 100 entrepreneurs, network members, and partners, panelists interview entrepreneur candidates about their businesses, evaluating them on their potential for high-impact growth, and deliberating on which candidates should be selected to become Endeavor Entrepreneurs.

“We founded Endeavor with the vision that anyone, from anywhere, can launch an idea; access the networks, talent and capital to take it to scale; achieve success; and emerge as a BIG Bubble in their ecosystem, paying it forward to multiply economic and cultural impact,” said Endeavor CEO Linda Rottenberg. “From the veteran network members and experienced Endeavor Entrepreneurs who served as panelists to identify new talent, to the high-impact entrepreneurs hailing from some of our newest locations such as Atlanta and Kenya, the Buenos Aires ISP was truly a testament to just that.”

The ISP is the culmination of a rigorous multi-step selection process to identify innovative and driven entrepreneurs who are committed to advancing an ecosystem of entrepreneurship.

Once selected, Endeavor Entrepreneurs gain access to comprehensive customized services, including introductions to local and international business mentors and volunteers from Fortune 500 consulting firms who will help them address key needs.

Endeavor Entrepreneurs have had a significant track record of creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, generating billions of dollars in revenues, and building sustainable growth models in their home countries.

Endeavor will host the remaining ISPs in 2018 in Athens (October 22-24) and Cape Town (Stellenbosch) (December 11-13).

Learn more about the companies and entrepreneurs selected below.

ARGENTINA

Company: Blue Star Group
Entrepreneur: Martin Castelli
Description: Blue Star Group (BSG) is the parent company of two fast-fashion accessory brands in Latam: Todomoda and Isadora. The two brands are known for being trendy, affordable, and high-quality. Todomoda is BSG’s brand for teens while Isadora focuses on young to mature women. BSG has nearly 80K daily buyers across its 800 stores in Argentina, Mexico, Chile, and Peru.

Company: Guapaletas
Entrepreneurs: Andres Gorostiaga and Federico Manzuoli
Description: Guapaletas, founded in 2015 by friends Andrés Gorostiaga and Federico Manzuoli, is Argentina’s most popular popsicle brand today. Consumers can choose from cream-based, fruit-based, stuffed (with dulce de leche, fruits, etc.), or sugar-free artisanal Guapaletas pops at the brand’s 76 POS. By 2019, the company plans to launch ice cream pints and chocolate covered ice cream bites as it navigates launching in Colombia and Uruguay.

Company: RDA
Entrepreneur: Arturo Simone
Description: For companies operating in Latin America, managing corporate vehicle fleets is a costly and inefficient drain on resources. RDA offers rental services and vehicle fleet management to companies in Argentina and Uruguay. RDA is the first company to bring a streamlined vehicle fleet solution to corporate clients in Argentina’s $138M rental and fleet management market.

ATLANTA

Company: BAMfi
Entrepreneur: Todd Ehrlich
Description: With its platform, BAMWire, which automates the factoring and invoice management processes, BAMfi quickly provides its blue-collar clients with working capital, allowing them to grow by, on average, 60% per year.

BRAZIL

Company: Accera
Entrepreneurs: Cristhiano Faé and Eduardo Kazmierczak
Description: Accera enables FMCG brands operating in Brazil to optimize their retail supply chain. With data insights from Accera, FMCG clients are able to streamline inventory planning and understand the details of customer demand for their products.

Company: Pipefy
Entrepreneur: Alessio Alionço
Description: Traditional Business Processes Management (BPM) Systems require an IT expert to deploy process improvements and automations. Pipefy’s intuitive platform empowers business process owners to control and improve their workflows without the need for IT involvement. This no-code characteristic allows rapid adoption of the software with the potential for company-wide penetration.

CHILE

Company: Lemontech
Entrepreneur: Ignacio Canals
Description: The legal industry traditionally tracks the progress of many court cases manually, which has proven to be a tedious and time-lagged process that restricts teams from reacting immediately to important developments. Lemontech’s innovative software products allows law firms and corporations’ legal divisions to automate their case tracking processes effectively, increasing clients’ productivity and bottom lines.

COLOMBIA

Company: Grupo MeikO
Entrepreneurs: Juan Manuel Medina and Svi Kishner
Description: FMCG brands have historically struggled to gather data on the independent retail segment, making it difficult to optimize their distribution and sales strategies. By collecting and analyzing data on 120K+ small independent retailers across Colombia and Peru, Grupo MeikO provides FMCG brands with actionable insights into brand performance, including details on share of shelf and total sales, leading to an average sales increase of 20%.

Company: Poke
Entrepreneurs: Camilo Obregon and Isabella Fernandez
Description: Founded by Camilo and Isabella Fernandez, Poke is the first fast-casual concept in Colombia that offers poke bowls, a Hawaiian dish made from sliced, raw fish, vegetables, and sushi rice. Launched in 2017, the company runs 4 restaurants, 3 “cloud” kitchens, and employs over 70 people. Poke plans to take a big bite of the $56B fast-casual restaurant industry in Latin America to offer healthy, fast and affordable meals across the continent by opening 40 locations across 5 countries within the next five years.

ECUADOR

Company: Ecopacific
Entrepreneurs: Jose Barcia and Kevin Barcia
Description: Ecopacific is Ecuador’s leading juice company. The family company owns four brands, three of which are beverage-focused and one of which is a minimally processed fruit company. Ecopacific formed in 2008 through the merger of three family businesses, allowing the team to vertically integrate its processes and develop an end-to-end value chain. They used the fruit company’s raw ingredients and processing practices to build out the beverage brands, which already had bottling and distribution processes in place.

KENYA

Company: Sokowatch
Entrepreneur: Daniel Yu
Description: Sokowatch is the only last-mile distribution and business management platform for informal retailers in Africa. Now, instead of leaving their shops to seek inventory from hawkers or wholesalers, retailers in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam use SMS or the Sokowatch mobile app to place 8,000+ on-demand orders each month.

Company: SunCulture
Entrepreneur: Samir Ibrahim
Description: Nairobi-based SunCulture is the first company to commercialize solar-powered irrigation in Africa. The company aims to make it cheaper and easier for smallholder farmers to grow high quality crops, increasing their yields by 300% and incomes by 10X.

MEXICO

Company: Ben & Frank
Entrepreneurs: Mariana Castillo, Maria Jose Madero & Eduardo Paulsen
Description: Ben & Frank is disrupting the eye glasses market in Mexico by cutting out intermediaries and selling direct-to-consumer. In Mexico, only 30% of people that require glasses actually wear them. This is mostly due to incredibly steep prices and limited eyewear options. Ben & Frank solves this problem by offering free eye exams at one of its five retail locations or through its network of doctors all across the country, selling direct-to-consumer at a fixed price of $92 (50% cheaper than competitors), and creating unique, stylish designs. With a truly omnichannel strategy, Ben & Frank is transforming the experience of buying glasses from a health-focused one to a fashion, customer-centric one.

PERU

Company: Chazki
Entrepreneur: Gonzalo Begazo
Description: Chazki is transforming the e-commerce delivery experience in LatAm through a fast, secure, transparent, and reliable delivery service. Leveraging its proprietary technology and large messenger network, the company provides customized delivery services with real-time traceability. Chazki has grown into a leading on-demand delivery platform, integrating with over 220 e-commerce and retail clients across Peru, Argentina, and Mexico.

THE PHILIPPINES

Company: Sprout Solutions
Entrepreneur: Patrick Gentry
Description: With 32 possible outcomes for overtime pay calculation, mandated contributions to 4 government agencies due every 2 weeks, and constant changes in labor laws, HR management in the Philippines is a major pain. Consequentially, 40% of Filipino business owners still use spreadsheets to manage HR. Enter Sprout Solutions, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that simplifies HR, payroll and timekeeping in the Philippines, eliminating payroll miscalculations and delays for 46K employees across 196 clients.

SOUTH AFRICA

Company: Pargo
Entrepreneurs: Lars Veul and Derk Hoekert
Description: Pargo is a smart logistics company that aims to be a key enabler for ecommerce growth in Africa by solving the challenges of last-mile delivery. Pargo allow consumers, companies and couriers to send and receive parcels at 2,000 pick-up points, conveniently dispersed in rural and urban areas across South Africa, and has recently expanded to Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland.

Company: Saryx Engineering Group
Entrepreneurs: Ingrid Osborne and Julie Mathieson
Description: Many companies in the mining, utilities, and manufacturing sectors require highly specialized engineering talent for complex projects, but lack the necessary expertise in-house. Saryx Engineering Group (SEG) provides a wide range of turnkey engineering services to help businesses achieve their technical goals. The aforementioned industries also place employees in high-risk environments with strict health and safety protocols. If compliance documents are found out-of-date during audits or accidents, the consequences are costly. As such, SEG also developed its own cloud-based platform, HSEC Online, which manages risk compliance documents online, in real-time, and saves clients an estimated $324M in violation costs each year.

SPAIN

Company: GOI
Entrepreneur: Yaiza Canosa
Description: GOI’s network of freelance drivers pick up, handle and install bulky items, such as furniture or even entire kitchens, in consumers’ homes. Operating in the fragmented logistics market, GOI is the first and only platform to provide a store-to-home logistics solution in Spain.