A leading business information company, venture capital investors poured a record $19.5 billion into startups based in Latin America last year. That was more than triple the amount invested in the region’s startups in 2020, turning Latin America into “the fastest growing region in the world for venture funding in 2021. In just the first two weeks of 2022, Latin American startups pulled in more than $450 million, and those investors are optimistic that tallies will keep rising. Most of the investments in Latin American startups went to large firms in late stages of fundraising and that are already operating in several countries. They include firms such as Brazil’s Nubank online bank, Colombia’s Rappi delivery services company and a Chilean company that pays people for the calories they burn walking or biking with money that it collects from thousands of companies.
Laboratoria, a Peruvian startup co-founded by Mariana Costa Checa, provides free six-month computer programming courses for women in impoverished areas, then places them in technology firms. Pachama, a startup led by Argentine entrepreneur Diego Saez, is fighting climate change by selling “carbon credits” to companies that pay other firms to plant trees or help conserve forests. Nilus, an Argentine company co-founded by Ady Beitler, recovers food that farmers normally throw away because it doesn’t have the perfect looks demanded by supermarkets — but is otherwise just fine — and sells it at below-market prices to the needy. The amount of money the region is investing in innovation is pitiful. While Israel invests 4.9% of its annual gross domestic product in research and development of new products, South Korea invest 4.5% and the United States puts in 2.8%, Latin American countries’ average investment in research and development is only 0.6%, according to the World Bank.