According to the Mercury Times, Google’s Eric Schmidt has indicated that he plans to invest significantly (via acquisitions and growing their own offices) in Latin America.
The article mentions that Google expects Latin American sales to more than double this year. That’s awesome (he didn’t mention anything about this though…).
We are very optimistic about the region as well, and welcome technology investments (as long as they don’t steal our developers!).
Sometimes we get the feeling that in the last few years Asia gets all the spotlight but hey, Latin America is booming too. As this Forbes’ article states:
“There is a market of 500 million people–about 8.6% of the world’s population–that the business media all too often neglects as it serves up story after story about China and India. That would be Latin America.”
Media seems to be more focused in everything that’s wrong about the region.
The article continues to give some interesting Internet usage stats:
“Between 2000 and 2007, the number of Internet users in Latin America grew from 18.1 million to 122.4 million, a compounded annual growth rate of 32% compared with only 12% in North America during the same period. Chile has the highest penetration of 43.2%, with Argentina at 39.7%, Brazil at 22.4%. Average penetration across Latin America is approximately 21.5%, as compared with 71.4% for the U.S. Overall, Latin America’s Internet population represents close to 10% of the world’s Internet users.”
The article also talks about Mercado Libre, the fellow Argentine startup who went public recently, as an example of local companies exploiting this boom.
Latin America is taking off, and we are proud to be part of it.
These are the articles we quoted:
Google plans big investments in Latin America [The Mercury News]
Latin America’s E-Commerce Leader [Forbes]
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2 Comments
Great post Diego! There’s certainly something big going on in latam. And maybe in 5 or 10 years everyone will be talking about us, just like China and India are the big hit today.
Unfortunately, some unreasonable politicians that sometimes emerge, play against the stability the region is willing to consolidate since the 80’s when democracy became a must.
Nietzsche once said that “each town’s identity is based on being the opposite of their neighbour’s identity”. And that certainly is the case when Latams closeness to US, tends to generate anti-US feelings along the whole continent, and that gets translated into the rise of figures like Fidel, Chavez, Correa, etc.
That’s the main issue to be resolved for us right now. Lots of funds and VCs are often skeptical about latam due politicians. Yet, as we get more success stories such as MELI and their constant approval by Wall Street.. one must be optimistic.
Santi, thanks for the comment! We are indeed optimistic. The entrepreneurial spirit of our people goes beyond isolated “enemies of progress”.