Endeavor Reaches Milestone of 2,000 Entrepreneurs Selected Following 92nd International Selection Panel in Riviera Maya, Mexico

During the 92nd International Selection Panel in Riviera Maya, held December 11-13, 2019, Endeavor officially marked the milestone selection of the 2,000th Endeavor Entrepreneur since the organization’s founding in 1997. With 24 entrepreneurs leading 15 companies from 11 markets selected at this week’s panel, Endeavor now supports 2,016 entrepreneurs leading 1,258 companies in 35+ growth markets around the world. 

“Endeavor was founded on the belief that anyone, from anywhere, could launch a crazy idea, access the resources and network to take it to scale, and pay their success forward to the next generation. More than 20 years later, it’s a testament to the strength of the global network we have built together to reach — and surpass — the milestone of 2,000 Endeavor Entrepreneurs. We look forward to supporting our newest entrepreneurs selected in Riviera Maya in their journey to scale, and continuing to support many more in the future,” said Endeavor Co-founder and CEO Linda Rottenberg.

The ISP is the culmination of a rigorous multi-step selection process to identify high-impact entrepreneurs who demonstrate the potential to leverage Endeavor’s resources and mentorship to create large-scale wealth and jobs, and are committed to reinvesting their time and money in their local entrepreneurship ecosystems to help others take off.

Over the course of the three-day event, panelists drawn from Endeavor’s extensive network of board members, mentors, supporters, and experienced Endeavor Entrepreneurs, 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. Panelists must vote unanimously for a candidate to become an Endeavor Entrepreneur.

From a South African chat-enabled commerce platform to a Brazilian wellness company, the entrepreneurs selected during the Riviera Maya ISP are leading companies spanning a wide variety of industry verticals and geographies. 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 impact. Endeavor Entrepreneurs have created 3 million jobs, generated $20 billion in revenue in 2018, and help build sustainable growth models in their home countries.

Endeavor thanks 92nd ISP Gold Level sponsor SoftBank; sponsors Flor de Caña, Alltournative, ábito, and La Europea; and supporters Casa de las Artesanías, YEMA, Pacari Chocolate, Don’t Worry, and Cervecería de Colima. 

ISPs in 2020 will be held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (February 10-12), Brooklyn, New York (March 23-25), London, U.K. (May 11-13), Bali, Indonesia (June 30-July 2), Nairobi, Kenya (August 10-12), Lake Como, Italy (September 14-16), Palo Alto, California (October 26-28), and São Paulo, Brazil (December 9-11). For more information on these events, please contact [email protected].

Learn more about the companies and entrepreneurs selected in Mexico below:

ARGENTINA

Entrepreneurs: Julian Gurfinkiel, Andres Malenky and Martin Levy
Company: Turismocity
Description: Turismocity is an online metasearch and price comparison tool which allows travelers throughout Latin America the ability to compare flights, hotels, cruises, rental car and travel packages between thousands of service providers. Its tech platform detects price updates in real-time and delivers personalized emails to its 7M subscribers through its character named Carla, driving consumer purchase behavior. Started in Argentina in 2014, it has since expanded marketing operations to seven Latin American countries and has become the third most searched Latam travel brand among OTAs and metasearchers.

Entrepreneurs: Agustina Fainguersch and Luciana Reznik
Company: Wolox
Description: Wolox is a software company that specializes in providing technological solutions to start-ups and companies that are seeking to innovate and need support in developing their ideas. Using the product building method, the Wolox tech teams guide clients through every stage of the process through the implementation of agile methodologies, high-end technology, personalized solutions, and quality assurance. The company has more than seven years in the market, and today has >400 employees and 200 products to serve its clients across Latin America and the US.

ATLANTA

Entrepreneur: Michael Jones
Company: Thrive Farmers
Description: The tired coffee supply chain is in need of a caffeine kick. Coffee and tea farmers have long been hindered by exploitative pricing, the unpredictability of commodity markets, and their distance from the end customer. The U.S. hot drinks market represents a $97B opportunity—one to which farmers can and should have access. Thrive Farmers is disrupting the traditional coffee and tea supply chain with an innovative revenue-sharing model that ties farmer payments to the end price paid by the customer, granting farmers higher incomes and greater stability. Founded in 2011, Thrive Farmers now works with over 1000 specialty coffee and tea farmers in 10 countries to bring sustainable, responsible coffee to the U.S with both B2B channels and a new retail concept. The company has also secured deals with large food and beverage corporations including Chick-fil-A, Jamba Juice, and Gordon Food Service.

BRAZIL 

Entrepreneurs: Eduardo Diniz and Lohran Schmidt
Company: Desinchá
Description: Lohran and Eduardo started Desinchá (meaning “deflate”) in 2017 with the mission to create a wellness company that would make healthy living more accessible for Brazilians. Their flagship product, Desinchá Dia, is made from eight simple ingredients, including green tea, guarana, yerba mate, peppermint, and carqueja. Less than two years later, Desinchá is now the #2 most popular tea in Brazil and its products are available in more than 20,000 points-of-sale throughout Brazil, including three company-owned stores. With more than 5 million followers on Instagram, Desinchá is one of the most representative brands on social media in Brazil.

Entrepreneurs: Britaldo Hernández Fernández, Rodrigo Iafelice dos Santos and Anselmo del Toro Arce
Company: Solinftec
Description: In response to the expected population-driven demand growth for food produced more sustainably and efficiently, Solinftec has developed a set of tech-solutions including proprietary hardware, telemetry communications, and a SaaS platform that helps farmers track and monitor the progress of their operations, in real time, helping them avoid mistakes, decrease costs and become more efficient. This enables them to increase the efficiency of their operations, resulting in decreased costs and pollution and increased yields. With the company’s IoT platform, smart black box installation on agricultural equipment, and its AI virtual assistance technology called ‘Alice,’ it has built its reputation on making several crops’ (sugarcane, soybeans, cotton, corn, wheat, grapes, orange, coffee, among others) operations digitized and more efficient. Today, Solinftec serves large international growers, including the top 10 Global sugar cane producers, dominating over 60% of the Brazilian sugarcane market. The company also holds a dominant position in agtech solutions for row crops in Brazil and sugarcane in Latin America, and is quickly growing in the US. In 2019 Solinftec started working very closely with 3 of the top 5 Ag Co-ops and Retailers, a combined 150 million acres in area of influence/reach. The company is also working successfully with over 35 small farmers in the US Midwest adapting its unique solutions to the smallholder’s needs.

COLOMBIA

Entrepreneur: Santiago Botero
Company: Finsocial
Description: Finsocial provides personal and payroll loans to teachers and pensioners, through a fully digital system that can analyze a customer’s credit-worthiness in minutes and disburse funds within a day. Twenty percent of Colombians are unbanked, 45% of the rural population lack access to financial services, and many more are too poorly rated or thin file to borrow. With wide coverage in rural areas, proprietary credit analysis software, a B-corps certification, and a low-risk lending profile due to government-backed payroll, Finsocial is ready to give teachers and pensioners the credit they deserve.

ECUADOR

Entrepreneur: Fernando Moncayo
Company: Inspectorio
Description: Inspectorio is a quality control and supplier compliance verification platform that brings transparency to the global supply chain. The company’s web and mobile technologies allow users to visualize data and analytics, creating efficiencies and accountability among stakeholders. The company offers a fast and affordable solution to monitor and participate in the on-site inspection process to access analytical advantages that provide insights into supplier performance. With major clients such as Kohl’s, American Eagle, Target, and Zara already signed, Inspectorio is well on its way to setting the global standard for production and supply chain compliance.

GREECE

Entrepreneur: Nicky Goulimis
Company: Nova Credit
Description: With global immigration growing from 258M people in 2017 to over 400M by 2050, the challenge of financial access for people who move is on the rise. Immigrants struggle to rent apartments, open bank accounts, and finance cell phones because their credit history is not portable, so they are forced to start over with every international move. Nova Credit provides seamless access to international credit history, enabling immigrants in the United States (46M) to restart their lives in a better position, and unlocking new consumers for lenders and other financial institutions.To ease the burden of immigration, Nova Credit works with three of the top five global banks, the largest tenant screening platforms, the leading credit bureaus across the world (Experian, Equifax, Transunion, CRIF, Creditinfo, etc.), and a broad range of fintech players and credit unions.

LOUISVILLE

Entrepreneur: Aaron Gani
Company: BehaVR
Description: BehaVR develops general wellness and digital therapeutics (DTx) virtual reality “experiences” to help users address stress, pain, addiction, and other mental health issues. Widely-accepted medical science indicates that virtual reality provides unique psychological and neurological effects that smartphone-based DTx – or in some cases, traditional behavioral or drug-based treatments – cannot replicate. BehaVR is a pure-play software company that earns revenue from selling annual subscriptions and per-engaged patient access to clinics, who in turn offer treatment to patients. BehaVR’s revenue has ballooned in its second year of sales, and has closed landmark deals with its first partners in the pharmaceutical and mass-retail health clinic sectors.

MEXICO

Entrepreneur: Courtney McColgan
Company: Runa
Description: Runa is a cloud-based payroll solution that is modernizing operations for companies across Latin America. Existing local solutions still require extensive use of Excel, and the bi-weekly process of paying employees can take up to 18 hours, draining time and resources and proving to be a frustrating and error-prone experience. Runa streamlines this process into a 15 minute workflow, and serves as a one stop shop for managing attendance, performance and workplace incidents for companies with up to 600 employees.

PHILIPPINES

Entrepreneur: Abetina Valenzuela
Company: Equilife Medical
Description: Equilife Medical (“Equilife”) makes critical care needs more available and affordable by offering medical device rental, on-site operating staff (e.g., respiratory therapists and nurses), and maintenance services (e.g., engineering calibration and repair) to intensive care units and homecare patients. Equilife is the only provider of medical equipment in the Philippines that offers “beyond-the-product” solutions that supplement equipment rentals, enabling it to slash costs of investment, procurement, and staff training far beyond its competitors.

SOUTH AFRICA

Entrepreneur: Pieter De Villiers
Company: Clickatell
Description: Clickatell’s chat commerce platform takes brands and services provides to where their customers and target market are (WhatsApp, FB Messenger, SMS, etc.) vs. asking customers to come to them (store, website, app download, etc.) enabling them to interact & transact 24×7, in real-time directly from anywhere (no new app, website or location required). Clickatell’s patent pending technology allows for ‘app like’ functionality that enables you and I to ‘get things done’ such as paying a beneficiary through chat banking or re-setting a password via chat self-serve all within the messaging platforms you already use.

Entrepreneur: Tinashe Ruzane
Company: FlexClub
Description: FlexClub is a car rental platform for ride-hailing drivers that offers them a flexible path to car ownership. To acquire cars, the platform partners with people who own cars, or are looking to buy cars, with the intention of earning passive rental income from those cars. These Vehicle Partners lease the vehicles to FlexClub, which in turn rents the vehicles to ride-hailing drivers on a “Drive-to-Buy” plan. FlexClub takes full responsibility for all insurance, maintenance and fleet management, ensuring the Vehicle Partners are completely passive. Today the company operates in South Africa and Mexico, as a preferred partner to Uber, supporting drivers in achieving their dreams of car ownership. The company plans to unlock vehicle access and ownership opportunities for more than 100,000 drivers across Africa and Latin America over the next 5 years.

URUGUAY

Entrepreneurs: Javier Rocha and Martín Barbot Barbot
Company: Funtour
Description: Funtour is a Uruguayan travel experience company that brings children and teenagers together to explore new parts of the world. Beyond the services of a traditional agency, Funtour crafts every moment from the planning sessions before a trip to reunions up to a year later to build community among students and trust among parents. With an app that shares photos, itineraries, and recaps, parents can rest assured that their children are safe and happy, while students are free to explore and form new friendships.

Entrepreneurs: Marcelo Daniel Lapi Cruz, Catalina María Prevett Vera and Andre Soares Buenos
Company: Softruck
Description: Softruck is an insurtech platform taking on car thieves across South America. Its AI-enabled software leverages billions of data points and works with off-the-shelf GPS systems to protect, track, and recover at-risk vehicles. Integrating seamlessly with local police forces, Softruck’s software can detect a theft before an owner realizes their car is missing, compare direction of travel to known patterns to determine where the vehicle is going, and recover it before the thief realizes what’s happening. With a 90%+ recover success rate, Softruck saves insurance carries money, gives vehicle owners peace of mind, and ensure would-be thieves think twice before making away with valuable property.