Brazilian PlataformaVerde wins Latam Edge Award in London

Contxto – Last Monday, the 2019 edition of Latam Edge Award took place at the London Science Museum in London, England. Upon evaluating finalists, this year Brazilian scale-up PlataformaVerde went home with top honors.

In Summary

In the end, the jury chose PlataformaVerde as the winner after considering three other Brazilian startups and one from Chile. As the winner, the company received a year’s worth of complimentary services from partners.

Amounting to approximately US$157 thousand, PlataformaVerde will receive assistance from companies such as Deloitte, FieldFisher, GrupoCASAUK. Additionally, it will open a bank account via SGS Partners plus receive office space at WeWork Labs.

PlataformaVerde is an online platform allowing companies to track, control and inspect the status and location of solid waste. Apart from optimizing waste treatment costs, the startup allows direct communication among participants within the supply chain. These include traders, service units, managers, carriers, etc.

Allegedly, it is the first virtual environmental management network. Its main goal is to diminish potentially detrimental activities regarding waste such as irregular landfills, illegal junkyards, etc. Moreover, the CRM platform uses blockchain technology to keep information encrypted and secure.

In-Depth

“Through our solution, the company can manage its environmental CRM in a consolidated way,” said Chicko Souza, CEO of PlataformaVerde. “Everything is on time and online, with all its network of relationships that acts in the management, control, transportation and destination of its solid waste.”

Latam Edge Award is the product of various organizations helping Latin American companies scale in the UK and Europe. Nonetheless, not every startup can apply. First, scale-ups need to be generating over US$1 million in sales before applying. Additionally, startups must intend on expanding to the British and European markets.

“With this award, we will dare to be global,” said Souza, saying that the mentoring and coaching sessions allowed him to tweak and improve his presentation pitch. “We competed against incredible ideas, and I didn’t think we were going to win.”

In this edition, there were more than 119 scale-ups from 11 Latin American countries. Regarding volume, Brazil had the most participants. From there, Chile, Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina followed in the number of candidates. Participating cities also increased as well as industries including education, healthtech, and agrotech.

“An initiative like this is vital to foster new innovative businesses in Brazil,” said Gustavo Rotta, Co-leader of Innovation at Deloitte in Brazil. “It is also an excellent opportunity for these companies to network with large corporations and get in touch with transforming the environment of advanced cities such as London.”

Fábio Gandour, IBM’s former head scientist and one of the judges, also mentioned that events such as Latam Edge Award are essential for the creation of new technology.

“Events such as the Latam Edge Award is important to stimulate the production of innovative ideas,” said Gandour, who believes that innovation shouldn’t stop there.

According to him, startups should go above and beyond a “good idea.” Instead, he recommended that young enterprises also consider implementation, technical feasibility, as well as business and commercial plans. After all, all of these are put to the test during the event and judging process.

-VC