40 High-Impact Entrepreneurs from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Greece, Lebanon, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Uruguay Join the Endeavor Network

MIAMI--()--Endeavor selected 40 High-Impact Entrepreneurs from 10 countries at its 46th International Selection Panel. Endeavor now supports 766 High-Impact Entrepreneurs from 476 companies in 14 emerging and growth market countries. The entrepreneurs were chosen at a Panel held from December 10-12.

“In Endeavor’s 15-year history, this was our largest International Selection Panel to date,” said Endeavor co-founder and CEO Linda Rottenberg. “We’re thrilled to witness to the incredible diversity in innovations from across the globe; and were especially impressed with the high level of panelists representing six countries. Our entrepreneurs and network continue to prove the transformative value and scope of high-impact entrepreneurship worldwide.”

Leading off a week of entrepreneurship and venture capital events in Miami, the Endeavor panel brought together candidates from 10 countries representing businesses from GPS tracking services and online insurance, payments and flash sales, to cataract surgery clinics and Saudi men's fashion.

The International Selection Panel is the culmination of a rigorous multi-step Search & Selection process where top local and international business leaders interview and then offer guidance to entrepreneur candidates. Post-selection, Endeavor provides entrepreneurs with customized services provided by local business mentors and volunteers from Fortune 500 consulting firms and top U.S. business schools. Endeavor Entrepreneurs have had a significant track record of creating thousands of jobs and building sustainable growth models in their home countries.

Entrepreneur(s)/Companies selected:

Argentina

Entrepreneurs: Frank Martin and Franco Silvetti
Company: Restorando (www.restorando.com)
Description: Restorando allows diners to book tables at their favorite restaurants online. Restaurants use the company’s cloud-based platform to offer their patrons a streamlined, transparent, and convenient way to book tables in advance.

Entrepreneurs: Felipe Herrera
Company: Ventas-Privadas (www.ventas-privadas.com)
Description: Using online flash sales, Ventas-Privadas allows brand-conscious consumers to purchase overstocked premium items at affordable prices while providing vendors with increased stock rotation and cash flow generation. The company’s eCommerce services unit provides solutions to brands with no or little online presence.

Entrepreneurs: Sally Buberman, Ignacio Lopez, and Maximiliano Menasches
Company: Wormhole IT (www.wormholeit.com)
Description: Wormhole IT offers a wide range of web conferencing services designed to work in areas with poor and unreliable Internet connections. Using Wormhole IT’s superior technology, individuals and institutions in the developing world can easily and affordably meet, train, and broadcast events online without sacrificing quality.

Brazil

Entrepreneur: Bruno Balbinot
Company: AMBAR
Description: AMBAR designs, produces, and installs home electrical systems for large-scale construction projects. Ambar’s industrialized solution reduces project time and cost by manufacturing and assembling precise electrical wire kits in a factory, resulting in an easy to install product that does not require highly-skilled labor. To date, the company has secured large-scale contracts with companies such as Odebrecht, Pacaembu, and Tecnisa.

Entrepreneurs: Alphonse Voigt, Wagner Ruiz, and João Del Valle
Company: Ebanx (http://www.ebanx.com/en/)
Description: Ebanx is a payment solutions provider that is revolutionizing e-commerce in Brazil. The company allows Brazilians to pay for online purchases from foreign merchants using domestic payment methods, including Boleto Bancario, bank transfers and domestic credit cards. Prior to Ebanx’s service, only Brazilians with access to international credit cards could transact with these merchants.

Entrepreneurs: Alencar Carvalho and Fabio Piastrelli
Company: Gera (www.geravd.com.br)
Description: Founded in 2005, Gera’s mission is to support the management of direct sales channels by providing IT tools, specialized personnel and services. The company’s cloud-based platform, GeraSGI, centrally manages the most critical processes in a variety of direct sales channels (door-to-door resellers). GeraSGI’s robust and flexible platform gives network administrators agile conditions to implement marketing and sales strategies, while controlling payments, orders, and inventory. To date, they have secured partnerships with large companies dealing in direct sales including Natura and Johnson & Johnson.

Entrepreneurs: Luis Milani and Carlos Alves
Company: Grupo Oilcheck (www.grupooilcheck.com.br)
Description: Grupo Oilcheck delivers the heavy machinery market a complete solution for both predictive maintenance – oil analysis – and preventive maintenance – microfiltration. Oilcheck provides oil analysis kits to the final customer, handles return logistics, and analyzes the oil in its lab – ultimately providing the client with detailed maintenance recommendations through a web platform, SMS, and a call center.

Entrepreneur: Gustavo Travassos
Company: MXT Holdings (www.mxt.com.br)
Description: MXT Holdings creates customized, comprehensive technological solutions—each consisting of integrated hardware, software, and back office services—that outperform those of competitors in terms of energy savings, connectivity, and processing power. MXT is recognized for its know-how and agile production model, which allow the company to deliver products and services up to ten times faster than competitors.

Entrepreneurs: Sérgio Lomachisky, Zeev Katz and Iliane Alencar
Company: Tec Saude (www.tecsaude.com.br)
Description: “The goal of your hospital is to take care of people. Our goal is to take care of your hospital.” That is the guiding philosophy behind TECSAÚDE, Brazil's leading clinical engineering outsourcing company. Regular maintenance and troubleshooting are essential to maintain the quality and lifetime of a piece of medical equipment, but the majority of hospitals in Brazil cannot afford to train and hire an in-house team of technicians and engineers. With a database of over 500 defined preventative maintenance procedures and 160 technicians and engineers on-site at the hospitals, TECSAÚDE is able to deliver a quick and efficient clinical engineering solution.

Entrepreneurs: Rafael Biasotto, Ivan de Oliveira
Company: Uatt? (www.uatt.com.br)
Description: Uatt? provides Brazil’s growing middle-class with exciting gifts and accessories. The company, based in Florianópolis, creates innovative, fun, and affordable products that are sold at over 3,500 retail locations throughout Brazil.

Chile

Entrepreneurs: Sebastian Valin
Company: ComparaOnline (www.comparaonline.com)
Description: ComparaOnline enables consumers to efficiently make informed insurance, telecommunications, and personal credit purchases while helping traditional vendors establish a Web-based sales channel.

Colombia

Entrepreneurs: Mario Hernández Zambrano, María Fernanda Hernández Pérez, Mario Hernández Pérez
Company: Marroquinera (www.mariohernandez.com)
Description: Marroquinera designs and sells leather goods and other accessories under the brands, MARIO HERNÁNDEZ and *FLY. The company has stores in Aruba, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Panama, and Venezuela. The leather goods are manufactured in-house while production is outsourced for other accessories such as travel bags and various gift items.

Entrepreneur: Jaime Arbeláez
Company: WideTech (www.widetech.com.co)
Description: WideTech helps companies to manage their logistics operations with a focus on vehicle fleets, field based sales personnel, and cargo. It has a proprietary, cloud-based software platform that provides clients with easy-to-read dashboards measuring and relaying relevant variables to help them cut costs, boost sales, and keep track of their logistics operations. The company also offers tracking solutions for taxi and bus fleets.

Greece

Entrepreneurs: Emilios Markou, Alexis Pantazis
Company: Hellas Direct (www.hellasdirect.gr)
Description: Hellas Direct is Greece's first online-only car insurance company. They use cutting edge technology to provide a quote in less than 5 minutes and their prices are generally lower than competitors of comparable quality. They achieve low prices through sophisticated algorithms and a low-risk portfolio that is restricted to safe drivers in the Greater Athens area.

Lebanon

Entrepreneurs: Herve Cuviliez and Delphine Edde
Company: Diwanee (www.diwanee.com, www.yasmina.com, www.3a2ilati.com)
Description: In an increasingly digitized age, Diwanee (Arabic for "e-gathering") seeks to bring the topics Arab women might discuss amongst themselves to the online platform. By 2015, Arabic is expected to be the fourth most widely used language on the internet, yet only 1.5% of total online content is in Arabic today. Diwanee's specialized web portals 3a2ilati.com (motherhood, health) and Yasmina.com (beauty, fashion, gossip) satisfy its readership with information tailored to their lifestyle and life stage. In just three years, Diwanee has become the market leader in women's lifestyle web content in the Arab language in an environment where large consumer brands are eager to target customer segments with high spending power.

Mexico

Entrepreneurs: Francisco Javier Cárdenas Ibarra
Company: Orcius (www.orcius.com)
Description: Orcius is a one-stop shop for SME web services. Instead of navigating a market full of freelancers with narrow skill sets, SMEs can now turn to Orcius for a full service experience including reliable web and mobile site design, hosting, site administration, and social media marketing services. Founded in 2008, Orcius uses a franchise model with a wide reach and has launched more websites than any of its competitors in Latin America.

Entrepreneurs: Javier Okhuysen Urrutia, Carlos Orellana Aguilar
Company: salaUno (www.salauno.com.mx)
Description: salaUno is a newly launched, well-received and growing provider of ophthamological services, specifically the surgical removal of cataracts, to lower income citizens in the Mexico City area. salaUno is a first mover in this sector in Mexico, and uses uniquely developed business practices that allow for surgeries at 60% less the cost of its competitors. They are one of the top institutions performing cataract surgery in Mexico City by volume.

Entrepreneurs: Vidal Cantú, Guillermo Farias
Company: Veramiko (www.inteam.com)
Description: Veramiko, founded in 2006 by Vidal Cantú and Guillermo Farías, has developed InTeam.com, an online platform that provides companies with an integrated intranet solution that fosters organic workplace collaboration. InTeam.com has all of the features of social networks, such as profiles, "walls", and news feeds, plus specialized business applications including project management tools, file sharing, wikis, and groups.

Saudi Arabia

Entrepreneur: Loai Naseem
Company: Lomar (www.lomarthobe.com)
Description: Lomar is the brainchild of Loai Naseem, a Saudi advertising executive turned fashion designer. Fed up with having to wear uniform, unoriginal thobes, the robe-like traditional Arab men's garments, he decided to create his own with modern, fashion-forward touches. His designs caught on and he turned this hobby into a luxury business, which now boasts 11 showrooms, 380 employees, a large manufacturing facility, and a loyal brand following.

Turkey

Entrepreneurs: Berk Aleva, Gizem Yasa, Harun Guner
Company: Butigo (http://www.butigo.com)
Description: In 2011 alone, Turkey saw 135 million online transactions worth US$12 billion. Butigo, the Turkish based fast fashion brand, seeks to capitalize on Turkey’s ecommerce opportunity and US$1.22 billion market for women's shoes. Inspired by the immensely popular shoedazzle.com (US), Butigo's celebrity endorsed online shoe brand offers Turkish women the latest high-end shoe designs at affordable prices, all through a customized online boutique. Each shoe ranges from US$27 to US$120 making the Butigo brand an affordable alternative to high-end designer shoes.

Uruguay

Entrepreneurs: Alvaro Maldonado and Eduardo Delbono
Company: Asuan (http://www.asuan.com.uy/quienes.htm)
Description: Asuan provides comprehensive turn-key systems to food processing and packaging facilities throughout Latin America. The company specializes in meat deboning systems, but also offers systems for a variety of different sectors within the food industry, including dairy and bread. Since its founding in 2004, Asuan has expanded from Uruguay into Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Paraguay with the help of market-leading clients JBS, SuKarne, and Gorina.

About Endeavor

Hailed by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman as “the best anti-poverty program of all,” Endeavor is leading the global movement to catalyze long-term economic growth by selecting, mentoring, and accelerating the best high-impact entrepreneurs around the world. To date, Endeavor has screened more than 30,000 entrepreneurs and selected 766 individuals leading 476 high-impact companies.

With support from Endeavor’s worldwide mentor network, these high-impact entrepreneurs:

-Have created over 200,000 jobs
-Generated over $5 billion in revenues in 2011
-Inspire future generations to innovate and take risks

Headquartered in New York City, Endeavor currently operates in 16 countries throughout Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Southeast Asia. As the high-impact movement expands globally, Endeavor will continue to prove that anyone with a big idea can succeed, from Silicon Valley to Latin America, the Middle East, and beyond.

Contacts

Endeavor
David Wachtel
Office Phone: +1-646-783-6139
Mobile Phone: +1-917-841-4474
e-mail: david.wachtel@endeavor.org

Release Summary

In Miami, Endeavor selected 40 High-Impact Entrepreneurs from 10 countries at its 46th International Selection Panel. Endeavor now supports 766 High-Impact Entrepreneurs in 14 countries.

Contacts

Endeavor
David Wachtel
Office Phone: +1-646-783-6139
Mobile Phone: +1-917-841-4474
e-mail: david.wachtel@endeavor.org