In less than 3 years and with 31 ventures attended from Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela, Sinergia Incubator is positioned as one of the main drivers of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the region. And this time, the Incubator is calling entrepreneurs from Uruguay and throughout Latin America to be part of its new incubation program, oriented to the Fintech sector.
The financial industry, new technologies and demanding consumers who increasingly need more immediacy, are pushing the Fintech industry -which combines the technology and financial sector-, with the result of an increasingly cheap and efficient service. The sector encompasses categories such as loans, payments and collections, personal finance, transfers, digital currency, institutional tools, crowdfunding, insurance, digital banking and blockchain.
In this context, the Sinergia Incubator aims to accelerate startups in the sector, so that they generate new tools and improve financial services in Uruguay and the region. "The goal is to revolutionize digital banking and the financial sector in general. Both in Latin America and in Uruguay, there is a fertile field for companies to grow within the sector. Everything is in place to walk this new path," says Florencia Clavijo, Mentoring Director of Incubadora Sinergia.
The director of Mentorías added that locally, one of the facts that favors this niche is the implementation of the Financial Inclusion Law, because it increased the number of people who have bank accounts and debit cards. Another factor is insecurity, which is currently discouraging many Uruguayans to pay in cash.
In addition, worldwide, physical money tends to disappear, which gives way to alternative forms of payment, collection and transactions. As for the receptivity of Uruguayans, Clavijo said that "it is likely that those over 45 years old choose to go to a bank office to make a transaction, but young adults and new generations prefer to handle everything from their cell phone.
Today the Sinergia Incubator has five generations of incubatees supported by ANII, and at this moment, out of 31 approved projects, 3 are from the fintech sector. Until now, the calls made by the incubator were multipurpose -startups from different areas could apply- but from this year they incorporated one of its two annual calls focused exclusively on the fintech sector.
"We believe that the best way to differentiate ourselves is to have a generation of incubatees working on the same topic. That way we can implement tools that are specific to them," Clavijo said.
In this sense, Sinergia Cowork is opening an office and coworking space in World Trade Center with the aim of nuclear Fintech sector.
Call for applications
The call is aimed at entrepreneurs with innovative projects that have been validated and have a differential value, capacity for growth and impact generation in any Fintech category.
The selected startups will have access to a seed capital of around $725,000 granted by ANII and a nine-month support program, tailored to the needs of each company. With the help of the incubator, entrepreneurs will have a wide network of mentors, links with major investors in the region and will become part of one of the best coworking spaces in Latin America.
The deadline to apply to the program is until Tuesday, May 23, 2017, and the selection process, which will last about a month and a half, has several steps. The first is to apply, completing the form through the website of the Incubadora Sinergia, where the validation of the project will be evaluated. Those who pass this first filter will be called to an initial pre-selection interview with the Sinergia Incubator Staff.
Interviews will be conducted in person for national participants and virtually for foreigners, and those selected at this stage must make a mandatory face-to-face pitch in front of a committee composed of the Incubator staff, members of the ANII, external jurors and industry specialists. Throughout the selection process, applicants are informed about the status of their project".
Finally, the committee will recommend the most promising projects to ANII's Board of Directors, so that they can access seed capital from the agency and become part of the new generation of incubatees program, which will begin in July 2017.
Source: El País
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