Latin America has become the perfect territory for social startups; Countries in the area are developing fabulous solutions. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) they lead Mexico, Brazil, followed by Argentina, Colombia and Chile. It is estimated that there are more than 2,000 startups. Five companies stand out that are dedicated to particular problems.
WiseWaste
This Brazilian company transforms waste into new products; through the system called ‘reverse economy’.
Among its customers are P&G, Adidas and Nestlé. The latter produces covers for coffee from industrial waste. Adidas did a cleaning in the rivers of Rio de Janeiro and with the waste made cones for soccer practice, which were distributed free. In 2016, Insper School and the magazine Small Businesses & Big Businesses named it as the best social impact company.
Include me.com
Founded in 2013, it is the first Argentine job portal for people with disabilities. Their entrepreneurs, Gabriel Marcolongo and Natalia Ca, explain that in four years 100,000 users from four Latin American nations have registered. Annually they offer 15,000 job offers and have employed 1,130 people. Includeme.com is in Chile, Peru, Mexico and will expand throughout Latin America.
Econduce
The startup rents electric scooters in the Mexican capital seeking to solve two major problems, mobility and environmental contingency. Blue bikes do not damage the atmosphere, move quickly and prevent users from getting trapped in the CDMX queues. The deputy director Jorge León, affirms that it arose when the plans of environmental contingency began. “We have 2,000 beneficiaries”. “We study the possibility of providing services in Latin American cities”.
Red Monalisa
It is a job portal for transvestites and transsexuals in Brazil. Because of the difficulty of finding a job, 90% of transsexuals are engaged in prostitution but are forced, as well as in the United States, to abandon their work because they are discriminated against and harassed. The platform founded by three women at the end of 2018 won an award in the Startup Weekend program held in September in Recife.
1Doc3
In 2014 it was founded motivated that its founder Javier Cardona being in Dubai became ill and did not find reliable information on the web, since all promoted self-medication. 1Doc3 warns about diseases, without diminishing importance to the doctor’s diagnosis and subsequent visit. The CEO notes that “The problem is that patients come to the office thinking they know more than the doctor”.
A person with discomfort enters 1Doc3 with more than 100,000 questions and a doctor answers him quickly and timely. “There are 40,000 users in the Aztec country and also in the continent whose access to health system is not good,” concludes Cardona. They study an alliance with Facebook for beneficiaries with Smartphones; In fact, it already works in Mexico with Telcel.
Also published on Medium.