The LatAm Edge Awards 2018 – 14th June 2018

London – 14th June 2018, the LatAm Edge Awards will be taking place during London Tech Week at the Global Ecosystem Summit, with experts from all five continents converging to debate the current state of tech ecosystems worldwide.

This is the only awards show to specifically focus on Latin American scale-ups looking to expand business to the UK and Europe.

The 6 finalists are competing for the prize of £120,000 worth of services, including: Development and Expansion of Business, Coaching, Digital Marketing, PR, Market Research, Branding and Design, Accountancy, legal assistance, and free office space for one year.

The 6 Latin American scale-up finalists are: V2COM (Brazil), DDH (Brazil), T4S Technology for Safety SA (Brazil); BiomiTech (Mexico); @Trimaker (Argentina), and Intelligens (Chile).

Sandra Sinicco, Head of LatamTech UK (the company responsible for the award), said of the day:

“It was very interesting to see, in this edition of the Latam Edge Award, the huge diversity between the finalists when it comes to geographical regions and areas of expertise, as well as seeing companies that are more and more structured, both from the perspective of their billing value, and from an organisational standpoint. This shows that, little by little, the innovation ecosystem in Latin America is maturing.

“In the last three years, we’ve been able to realise that even though Latin American governments, for the most part, are slow to support the growth innovative companies, innovation is bubbling and constantly coming to life in Latin American countries.”

Stats of the 2018 LatAM Edge Adwards:

166 companies signed up, from 29 different countries and 15 different areas of expertise:

Smartcities 14%, Technologies 13%, Creative 11%, Fintech 10%, Management 10%, Retail 8%, Health 7% , Education 6% , Agritech 5%, Media and Energy 4%, and Cleantech, Big Data, Government e-Gaming with 2% .

83% of companies came from Latin America, 7% from North America and the Caribbean, 5% from Europe, 4% from Asia and 1% from Africa.

The countries which had the highest numbers of registered scale-ups were: Brazil (30%); Mexico (19%); Colombia (10%) and Argentina (10%) which confirms something we already knew: these are the countries with the fastest growing tech ecosystems in Latin America. This year, Chile accounted for only 4% of those registered.

The participating scale-ups came from 72 cities, with São Paulo (10%) being responsible for the highest number of registered companies, followed by Buenos Aires at 8%, Mexico City at 7% and Bogotá 5%.